Another Risk To Take
by SociallyInept
Summary: "A Risk Worth Taking" sequel- Chessie is hired to teach Defense at Hogwarts, and opts to do so as an open werewolf. Ambrose (formerly known as Wat) is the first openly werewolf student as well. What adventures will befall Slytherin House, and Hogwarts in general, post- Second Wizarding War? Update: Year 2 has begun 5/29/18. Year 3 coming soon!
1. Reintroductions

A Risk Worth Taking is the prequel to this- I wrote it so long ago but simply couldn't leave the story alone. So much thought went into a sequel even though it went into uncharted territory for the HP-verse. Chessie, Ambrose, Absolom, Danielle, and some other characters in the future are mine. The ones you immediately know are J.K. Rowling's.

* * *

Chessie took a deep breath in, and let out a slow exhale. She took her seat between Professor Flitwick and Professor Sinistra at the head table of Hogwarts, and tried to look like she belonged. She had only received the letter asking if she would take the Defense Against the Dark Arts position three weeks before. She had intended to refuse until George intercepted her letter and convinced her to accept. Chessie may not have been in the Battle of Hogwarts, but her group of werewolves had seen their share of the dark war, herself included. Right as Chessie had began to resign herself to being a moocher on the surviving Weasley twin's generosity, the letter had arrived. George had responded for her.

She sat between professors who had taught her merely four years before, and tried to carry herself as though she were older than she was, while trying not to act like robes or brushing her hair had become unnatural for her. Underneath her plain black robes and witches' hat, she had a t-shirt on with a long skirt so that at least something would seem normal to her. Unfortunately even the most effort and charms hadn't quite tamed her hair, which had spring into a sort of jheri curl of its own volition and refused to deviate.

Once again in George Weasley's care, Rose, her ward, was about to begin her third year in the muggle school system in London. They had decided to go ahead and send her to muggle school while waiting to determine if she was going to receive a Hogwarts letter or not. Chessie had left early to sit through the pre-academic-year Hogwarts Staff meetings and found that even though she was awkwardly young, she was not necessarily out of place back at the school. Some of the professors had downright ornery personalities behind closed doors that Chessie appreciated even though she acted aloof.

This was also good because as Hogwarts' second werewolf professor in history, she had large shoes to fill and a role to establish in the new wizarding world. Many people had noted the werewolves under Fenrir Greyback (Chessie always had to fight the urge to spit when she heard the name), but Chessie was put in the perfect spot to begin salvaging the reputation and proving that werewolves literally just wanted an assured quality of life, not mayhem and chaos. It was a tall order for a twenty year old, but Chessie had been forced to be up to the task partially due to George answering for her and partially because Wat, who as it turned out belonged to a pureblood family of considerable wealth, would be starting his second year along with his apparent twin brother. The two should have started the previous year, but the school had still been closed for repairs following the climactic end of the war.

As Headmistress McGonagall led the first year and second years who had missed their first years up to the front of the Great Hall, Chessie controlled her breathing. Chessie was encouraged by seeing her werewolf amongst the new students- Ambrose, formerly known as Wat, who apparently was not just a muggle, not just a wizard, but among the wizard family Cenopathy. Not quite one of the Great 28, yet still one of the richest families in Great Britain. He had been reunited with a lonely, sad mother and twin a year prior and both boys had been trained up in their first year curriculum, as had many of the young pre-teens starting their second year with no first year preceding it.

Ambrose/Wat was easily distinguishable from his twin brother Absolom by his silvery hair and his scarring. Absolom was what the twins would have looked like if they hadn't ever been separated; Absolom was tall for an eleven year old, with dark brown waves hanging over his angular yet distant face and olive skin tone. Ambrose, known to Chessie and her werewolves as Wat, has a similar angular facial structure but also had extensive scarring over the right side of his face, ear, and neck, a non-healing remnant of the werewolf attack that had ruined his life forever. Ambrose's salt and pepper hair, paler appearance, and scarring made it easier to distinguish which twin was whom after the Sorting. It would likely become evident quite soon to his peers that Ambrose was also deaf on his right side due to this scarring as well.

The twin boys, so recently reunited after years of separation, stood one behind the other in the single line of first years that was waiting to be sorted. Absolom, a heavy name for an eleven year old son of former Death Eaters, was almost shivering in his robes. Ambrose, with his silvery hair, was right behind him in line.

Chessie feigned indifference as student were sorted by the Sorting Hat, only shedding her casual behavior for the twins. Both Absolom and Ambrose were sorted into Slytherin. Chessie frowned slightly. She hadn't expected Ambrose to get put there. Once a Greyback favorite successor for power, Wat had fought back along with the rest of the runaway wolves under Chessie and established his own identity. She couldn't figure out how he hadn't been put in Gryffindor, but into her old House, and wondered what troubles would lay ahead for him.

Probably a lot less than she had dealt with, if she were honest. Chessie hadn't been a werewolf during her Hogwarts years, but was an awkward loner who had an unstoppable urge to blend into the background to avoid being spoken to, and to steal anything that wasn't secured from her dormmates, who were all wealthy enough to not realize their stuff had been rifled through. Ambrose would at least have his brother; prestigious wizarding family aside, the twins had reunited as though neither had ever been away from the other. She had received letters from their mother stating as much. If only Hope, their younger sister who Chessie had also liberated from the werewolf camp, had survived the war...

Chessie blinked away the shadow of tears and refocused on McGonagall's speech about post-war triumphs and sacrifice and whatnot. She casually introduced Chessie as though it was perfectly normal to have a werewolf professor, and moved on to the rest of the announcements. Chessie smirked at the shocked looks on many students' faces as they studied their Defense teacher; she was aware that she was tall but slight, and had a mean expression most of the time. Not quite what most people expect.

At the end of the feast, the four Heads of Houses rose to escort their students to their dorms. Chessie followed the rest of the professors to the staff room for a final pre-school-year meeting, and braced herself for the school year ahead.


	2. First Day Flashbacks

The classroom gradually filled with first year Ravenclaw and Slytherin students. She had seen this room in many incarnations over her seven years at Hogwarts as a student, culminating in hideous pink cat decorations courtesy of Dolores Umbridge in her seventh year. As a bit of a minimalist, Chessie minimized her own décor to merely the essentials- desks, chairs, renderings of dark creatures, and the occasional taxidermied specimen on a display. Up the slight staircase to what she referred to as her 'indoor balcony', her office was decorated just as sparsely with only one photograph framed on her oak desk, facing her thinly padded chair; a photo George had convinced her to take with himself, herself, and Rose, Chessie's young blonde bespectacled ward, smiling and enjoying a lovely day in Munich one weekend not long after the war ended. The loss of Fred still showed in George's eyes, but it had been the first time he had genuinely smiled in several weeks and so Chessie cherished it anyway. Not that she would admit to sentimentality.

Once the students were all seated, if still nervously chatty, Chessie descended the short staircase to the main floor of the classroom in full wizarding robes sans the pointed wizard hat. She hated wearing hats so much, and unless she specifically had to she wouldn't, she had already decided. Chessie had opted for an intimidating outfit for the first day of school, and so was wearing a black blouse and black jeans underneath her open robes, and her favorite boots. George called them her dominatrix heels, but no need for the students to find that out. Ever.

As she descended, her shiny leather stiletto boots making contact with each step with an audible thud, the noise diminished until she was standing in front of the first years in silence, with her hands on her hips and a skeptical look on her face. In her peripheral vision, Chessie noted that Ambrose and his brother Absolom, sitting next to each other a few rows back, were not nearly as nervous as the rest of the students. Chessie already knew from tidbits of his mother's marathon-length letters to her about Ambrose's readustment into society, that Absolom was either going to be the class clown or the know-it-all of the group. He was even grinning at her, thinking he had an advantage over his classmates.

"Absolom Cenopathy," she said sharply, causing the dark-haired child to tense up, "What is the spell to use to disarm a boggart if one were to appear in front of you?"

The boy was silent, his confidence slipping. Good. Chessie had no intention of catering to favoritism and wanted to crush everyone's dreams equally.

"Anyone?"

A hand quickly rose on the Ravenclaw side of the room. Of course it would be, she told herself mentally. Chessie had copied exams off of many a Ravenclaw in her day.

"Yes, you," she nodded at the girl with her hand up.

"Ma'am, a boggart can be neutralized using the spell 'ridikulus'. This forces it to assume a silly form based on the spell caster's preference and interrupts the terror it is trying to cause."

"Of course, this is not a topic we will even get to until your third year, so the fact that you already know the answer has certainly left me with an impression," Chessie's eyebrow rose as she sized up the girl, the impression being given off that it wasn't necessarily a good impression. "Who are you?"

"Danielle Robinson," she said politely, lowering her hand. Chessie sighed internally, she had always hated the know-it-all students.

"I suppose a point for Ravenclaw for taking the initiative," she conceded. "What is the potion called that is used by werewolves to ease their transformations once a month?"

The same hand shot up. Chessie waited, but no other students seemed to know. They were a bit transfixed, watching her.

"Miss Robinson?" Chessie acknowledged.

"It is called the Wolfsbane Potion, ma'am. It is called as such due to wolfsbane, or aconite, being the main contributing ingredient."

Chessie smirked. "And is there a way to make it taste any less disgusting?"

No hands rose. The little Ravenclaw looked helpless at not knowing an answer. Finally a hand rose on the Slytherin side- Ambrose had lifted his.

"Yes, Ambrose?" Chessie said, making sure to say his actual name instead of the name she had given him merely two and a half years before, during her mission for the Ministry. Wat was his camp name, that Chessie had given him when he refused to acknowledge his own. Not long after the war had ended and homes were found for her young werewolves, the discovery that Ambrose was from a pureblood family had surprised several people. The reunion of the remaining members- Astralis Cenopathy, quietly resigned to solitude after her Death Eater husband's death, and Absolom as the twin and assumed only surviving child of three- was encouraging and uplifting. Ambrose had been given his own room. Within days the twins had decided to share a room. It was the brightest story Chessie had heard from her wolves so far. Significant amounts of therapy and resocialization later, two Hogwarts letters had arrived.

Ambrose hesitated, gaze fading as he reassured himself momentarily, then took a deep, firm breath. They had discussed this several times in the preceding weeks and he had agreed to the idea. No more secrets. Absolom looked very serious now, watching the class from his brother's side.

"There isn't." he said, faking confidence. "There is no known way to make it taste better without rendering the potion useless."

"And how would you know?"

This was the moment they had rehearsed over and over again, all August.

"Because, ma'am, like yourself, I am a werewolf."

The class gasped.

Word had already gotten around by lunchtime. In the other classes that morning, Chessie had been the one to bluntly answer that question herself, ensuring that not only Ambrose would take flak for being honest about a condition. Due to a class occurring right after lunch, Chessie had opted for lunch in her office, but noted the silence and then sudden rise in whispers when she arrived in the Great Hall for supper that evening. She held her chin high and strode to her seat as though paparazzi were following her, and sat down calmly in her seat as students alternated between open gaping and trying to stare with their peripheral vision.

"Really, Chessie," Flitwick admonished under his breath as he took a slice of steak from a serving dish. "This is all they are going to talk about all week."

Chessie commandeered the steak dish smugly "Better talk about me than who they remember dying here two years ago."

Flitwick winced. "I suppose if you are willing to accept the role, that may not be a bad idea."

"Well," Between Flitwick and McGonagall, Professor Horace Slughorn said softly, "If you were looking for attention it has certainly worked."

"No." Chessie said pseudo-sweetly, cutting her steak. "Slughorn, let's get something straight. I am not after your job. I am only here because I was specifically asked to be. My loyalty and attention goes to the students until the day I am fired. Eat the three servings' worth of mash on your plate and mind your own."

No one had a response for that, although Chessie could almost swear that McGonagall was hiding a smirk.


	3. Settling In

It didn't take a surprisingly long time for the hubbub to die down because Chessie was a bitter, cynical person, and wasn't surprised at how long animosity tended to linger. She gladly fought the students for their loyalty and respect and surprisingly, after the first twoish weeks, it was gradually being given. However, the first full moon of the school year was going to rise Wednesday night, and Chessie had a plan up her sleeve that had been pre-approved excitedly by the Governors of the school nearly a month prior.

"Students, please, " she said politely towards the end of her first Monday class. The Ravenclaw and Slytherin first years found stopping points in their classwork and gave her their attention. It hadn't taken long for them to realize that, werewolf or not, she would demand their respect. Just to be sure, she waited for the last students to finish and look up before continuing.

"You don't know this because you have not gotten this far in your astrology classes yet, but tomorrow night marks the full moon." she couldn't help but pace slightly as she spoke, forcing her voice to be even and strong but unable to control her legs fidgeting, "I have developed an agreement with Headmistress McGonagall for covering me for the day after, and the next day after the full moon. So I would like to take these last few minutes of class to tell you about your guest speaker, and lay down some ground rules for your behavior. And also give you the guideline for the paper you will be turning in to me on Monday." She grinned at the collective class groan at weekend homework.

McGonagall had taken to Chessie's idea swimmingly. Chessie recalled hating when Snape would substitute for Remus Lupin in her fifth year (despite him being her head of house, Chessie having been in Slytherin), and given the recent war, thought that her Defense students would garner far more knowledge from a guest speaker than a lecture substitute. To this end, she had wrangled a full semester's worth of guest speakers who had played some level of role in the war to speak for two days each, one speaker per full moon.

Two days ensured that all the students would hear a lecture, and give her ample time to recover from her transformation. She had even accounted for Wat- Ambrose, she corrected herself. The second day after the full moon, when he was functional, if not healed, Ambrose would sit in with the Hufflepuff and Gryffindor second years on Friday so that he, too, could write his mandatory essay. They had spent several hours in staff meetings determining how to make sure a minimal amount of exceptions were made for the first werewolf student in almost fifty years. Lupin had set quite an example, but Wat- Ambrose, she corrected herself again, certainly seemed bright enough to follow in those footsteps.

The next morning, Chessie stared at her face in the mirror in her private quarters at Hogwarts. There were bags under her amber eyes. The piercing golden eye color she had developed when first bitten by Greyback had never reverted to her previous hazel, and she was used to it at this point. At times, even delighting in the fierceness it lent her expressions. Her skin, normally a lovely chocolate brown, was ashen with the soon-rising moon, and her crazy curly brown hair even seemed limp. Chessie pulled it back with a band and hoped it would stay mostly out of the way. For her schedule of speakers to work with a minimum amount of days off from their own careers, Chessie needed to struggle through the day of the full moon every month. Once classes are over there is a four day weekend for her, she reminded herself.

It wasn't long before there was a knock on her door, and Ambrose appeared with a similar haggard appearance. They chatted about his schedule and dormmates and downed the Wolfsbane Potion that had been provided all week in one giant chug each, wincing at the terrible taste, and then Ambrose left to force himself through the day of classes.

Three classes today, Chessie tried to coach herself. Third year Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw, fifth year Gryffindor and Slytherin, and seventh year advanced class. That last one would be the most difficult, but Chessie was clever and had come up with a sort of peer-teaching group presentation project that would cover her wolf hide for the days before the full moon each month.

Of course that seventh year advanced class chose werewolves as their first group project. Chessie realized she should have seen it coming- these are students who were in their fifth or sixth years of their studies when the Battle of Hogwarts took place; they had developed a cynicism that she would possibly not be able to erase.

"And so, possibly because of the lack of Ministry regulation, werewolves are still around us in Great Britain and possibly worldwide," an unpleasant student finished. Chessie rolled her eyes to herself, and then stood up.

"That was very bitter and inaccurate. Is there anything else?"

The small group of students stared back unabashed, as though daring her to challenge them. Chessie knew better that to rise to that bait; she knew that Greyback had killed at least one student at Hogwarts less that two years ago. No, the part she mainly was skeptical about was the assumption that the Ministry could control beasts. She had had to go in and register on the Werewolf Registry as a motion of good faith with the school Governors, and had noted the absence of quite a few names she knew to belong to werewolves. Basically, all of them.

"Very well then," she said diplomatically, hiding the rage within, "Please be seated.

"I must stress that your reports be unbiased," Chessie said witheringly, "because the point of this class is not to focus on how terrible things are- or people-" she pointedly looked at the main speaker of the anti-werewolf group who just presented, "-but to showcase your research abilities and ability to form facts into reasoned arguments. Nevertheless, let's discuss your Friday class period. As is, at this point, very well known knowledge, I will be out because I will be recovering from the immensely excruciating transformations involved in being a werewolf. Thursday and Friday's guest speaker is an Auror- one of the best, actually, who I trust to talk quite candidly about his struggles and solutions during the Second Dark War. You have all heard of him..."

By Friday evening, Chessie felt somewhat alive enough to go to the Great Hall for supper and deal with people. That Wolfsbane Potion was a lifesaver. It cut recovery time into a quarter of what it could have been if the feral wolf within were let loose. As it were, the bandages on her few injuries were hidden beneath long sleeves and robes as Chessie strode into the Great Hall. For once, the students seemed happy and surprised to see her. She overheard quite a bit of chatter about her guest speaker- Chessie had pulled a few strings and gotten Auror Bill Savage, whose daughter Penny's life she had saved several years prior, to lecture on being an Auror during the Dark War. Apparently it had gone over quite well. She espied at least a few students across the houses already working on essays, including Ambrose and Absolom, hard at work with their heads together at the Slytherin table.

She gently lowered herself into a hard wooden chair between Professors Sprout and Vector, wincing slightly at how sore her muscles still were.

"Feeling alright, there?" Sprout asked sympathetically.

Chessie was going to be sarcastic but accidentally spoke the truth instead, "I love that terrible, foul, disgusting potion so much."

"Really?" Sinistra Vector asked, thoughtfully spearing a broccoli with her fork.

"Really. I would still be unconscious in St. Mungo's without it," Chessie admitted as she loaded up her plate with food. "If George hadn't been paying for it for me I would probably have killed myself by now as a wolf."

Sprout swiveled around in her seat, her gossip beacon sounding internally. "George...?"

Chessie winced. She was still trying to wrap her mind around the professors' personalities. Pomona Sprout was a remorseless gossip and Chessie had just given her a morsel. "Weasley." she pouted. "Yes, that one."

The grin that spread across Sprout's face was marvelous. "That's the boyfriend you have been living with? George Weasley? No wonder these students can't pull anything over on you!"

Chessie shrugged but didn't deny it. They had an incredibly firm 'don't prank Chessie' rule in the loft over Weasleys' Wizarding Wheezes based on a single incident in which Chessie's flash temper managed to fully erupt. It involved adhesives. It hadn't happened again. Of course, Verity had left and George was still struggling to feel inspiration, but that was entirely another issue these days.

"How is he doing these days, what with... you know." Sprout winced a little, smile fading. Chessie, once again, found herself telling the truth. Perhaps it was something honest in Sprout's round little old face, but Chessie was utterly disarmed by her.

"Not great," she said sadly, fiddling with a yam on her plate. "Better, now that some time has passed, but I don't think he will ever be back to before. You have no idea how patient I have been forcing myself to be so that he doesn't push me away too. Molly told me that he won't hardly speak with anyone else anymore. One of my biggest arguments for taking this position was the distance, but he said not to fuss over him."

Vector and Sprout both lowered their eyes, imagining the Weasley twins of infamy minus one. It was a very bitter pill to swallow.

Septima Vector spoke up quietly, "I realize this more than likely won't be taken up, but if either of you ever need any of us, we are all here. That sounds strange with how many points we had deducted over the years-"

"-Oh, hundreds-" Sprout laid her hand on Chessie's arm, smiling fondly.

"-But the offer stands. We remember both of them quite well."

There was an awkward pause in which Chessie had to swallow a lump in her throat and could only nod an acknowledgement.

"Thank you," she managed in almost a whisper. Sprout tried to cheer her up.

"Don't you worry about Slughorn over there, if you have any troubles we are both open. So is Filius. Aurora. Minerva. Even Hagrid will give it a spirited try, especially after a few drinks. You pass that on to your boy Ambrose as well. We all remember Remus's struggles as a student, and his condition wasn't even common knowledge." she slapped Chessie's shoulder sympathetically, and Chessie tried not to black out mid-gulp of her cup of tea.


	4. Quidditch and Sucking Up

The semester passed, and the weather grew colder. For the most part, Chessie still felt a bit surreal, as though she was walking through her adult life and her youth at the same time in the halls and classrooms of Hogwarts. The uniforms were the same, the behaviors were the same. Many of the professors were the same. But one thing Chessie had forgotten about was the fever pitch of quidditch. She knew exactly when the first game of the year would be despite actively avoiding the information, because McGonagall kept bringing it up in staff meetings.

Finally, gameday came. The first match since the school had been destroyed- really, Chessie reminded herself as McGonagall practically dragged her by the arm up the stairs to where the professors sat- the first match since 1996. It had been four years since the last Hogwarts quidditch match. Chessie had graduated before then and did not regret the absence of quidditch in her life, but apparently it had to be faked for her job's sake.

She was surreptitiously reading a book she had tucked up under her robes when Flitwick nudged her gently.

"What are you reading?" he whispered, sounding just as bored as she was. Despite being decked out in Ravenclaw attire.

"A New Theory of Numerology," she whispered back, glancing surreptitiously around to see if anyone else had noticed her not paying the least bit of attention. None had. She tried to re-contain her hair under the long scarf she had wrapped it in. Headwraps, she reasoned, were not hats and therefore were acceptable. And she had opted for black, which went nicely with her robes. "I realize the book is for beginners but Septima made arithmancy so much more interesting than back in my student days. This is her copy that I borrowed."

Flitwich nodded. "If you are that easily influenced, I might recommend some texts on charms," he smiled. Chessie rolled her eyes.

"I live with a charms master and I am quite enjoying the break from mayhem," she grinned back.

"Forgive me for not remembering, but what did you prefer when you were a student here?" Flitwick asked, ignoring the bludger that flew perilously close to the teachers' seats. Everybody ducked except for him. Behind him, McGonagall gave them both a very stern glance and then returned to the game, trying very hard not to cheer for Gryffindor since she was headmistress now.

Chessie tried to remember. "Mostly I remember being victim to quite a few of George and Fred's pranks, or avoiding my dear fellow Slytherins," she conceded. "But I was quite fond of Muggle Studies and Arithmancy, even though I didn't make the grades to keep studying it. Maybe reading this will help me work on those skills."

Flitwick nodded excitedly. "I can't stand all the numbers myself but I commend your commitment to improving your knowledge! I must confess, I have been wanting to sit in on your guest speakers for Defense."

"I'd say you probably defended yourself against the Dark Arts quite well," Chessie grinned at the diminutive professor. He bowed in gratitude.

"There is always room for improvement."

"In that case, you are more than welcome to sit in on my guest speakers," Chessie actually smiled at her colleague, finally beginning to feel like she belonged. Flitwick beamed back excitedly.

At that point, McGonagall shushed them both and made Chessie put the book away and pay attention to the game. Whenever McGonagall was distracted, she and Flitwick invented their own commentary, only stopping when Slughorn tried to join in.

The following Monday morning, the only available seat was next to Slughorn. Chessie considered what she knew of him, since his tenure at Hogwarts had been split before and after her years of attendance. Seemingly a coward, but she had heard of his bravery at the Battle of Hogwarts. Self-servicing, persuasive. Cunning. A charmer. Classic Slytherin traits. Chessie was worried that her last several years of hanging out with muggles and Gryffindors had dulled her senses, so she was determined to be unreadable until an opinion was formed. She sat down next to the large old man gingerly, trying to be invisible without actually being so. It didn't work; as soon as she had pushed her seat in under herself, he spoke.

"Miss Wharton, I believe we got off on the wrong foot somehow and I do apologize."

That was not quite what Chessie had been expecting. She looked over at him. The post war-years hadn't done much good- Slughorn still had a lot of girth and a bald head, but there were more wrinkles on his hands and face than ever and a sad look in his eyes that she didn't know what to make of.

"Oh?" she responded, absently slopping some marmalade on two pieces of toast. Slughorn nodded solemnly.

"I initially had you down as a fame-seeker, someone who was willing to exploit a condition for attention," Chessie bristled with anger, but Slughorn, noticing, continued hurriedly, "However I see that I was wrong. It would be my honor to serve tea in my office this afternoon about two, if you would join me. We have much to discuss."

She was about to refuse but hesitated, biting into her toast. Slughorn, from what she heard, had an uncanny ability to detect remarkable traits in students. He had managed to survive the war, which as a Slytherin was no mean feat. Also, he was head of Slytherin not once, but twice now. Whatever this instinct he had for self-preservation was, perhaps it would do her some good to find out how to use it. Chessie turned towards the head of her former house, and gracefully bowed her head.

"I will see you at tea, then," she said neutrally. Slughorn sighed smugly and returned to his breakfast.

Despite her best efforts, time passed, and Chessie found herself approaching Slughorn's office. She had opted for a modest outfit of long sleeves and pants under her robes just so he wouldn't get any ideas whatsoever, not that there was any concern of that, and hestitated before knocking on his door.

He answered right away in a smoking robe, with a pipe. "You are just on time," he said cheerfully, "How considerate."

"I said I would be here at this time," Chessie said bluntly, guarding herself. Somehow, Slughorn seemed to see right through it.

"You are trying to appear strong," he said absently, while taking the kettle off the fire. "Assuming that I don't know the difference from disguised uncertainty and courage. I assure you, both are unnecessary. I am a man of connections. I enjoy a social network of former students and peers, and creating connections that will be beneficial both to those students and myself."

Slughorn gracefully poured the tea into two china teacups that were situated on a platter along with sugar and milk. "It behooves me to get to know changes at this institution, including amongst the professors who teach here."

Chessie gingerly reached for a teacup, feeling like she made a mistake. "Yet somehow no other professors have been invited to tea." she said far more confidently than she felt. She didn't take any sugar or milk, sipping her tea as it was. Slughorn loaded both into his cup before sipping.

"What is your impression of me?" he asked suddenly, looking her in her eyes. Chessie met his gaze calmly. She had gazed in far worse eyes, and this one's were a cakewalk in comparison. She continued, momentarily confident.

"You are desperate for connections. You have no confidence of your own, and exist solely on the benefactions of your former students whose careers, or marriages, you set up. You see, you act as though you know me, but I did my research on you, Horace, and despite your heroics at the Battle of Hogwarts, you were found wanting." Chessie sipped her tea, and continued. "However despite all of this, I have been fighting an urge to use you for my own goals. You have connections. You know people everywhere. And I have people depending on me for their livelihoods, for the food on their tables even. I came to tea expecting that we could find some sort of agreement."

She finished her cup and poured a second, still black. Slughorn sat back in his chair.

"Well, then," he said, gathering himself. "It seems that you see me quite thoroughly. I must agree with you though, many of the members of the Ministry were once members of the Slug Club, and though I no longer disallusion myself with grand influence over them, I may be able to assist."

"I don't want charity," Chessie warned, scowling over her fragile teacup. "I would not use you if it meant a disadvantage to me."

Slughorn laughed. "A disadvantage!" he chortled. "My girl, I aim to assist. I know your child Ambrose-"

"-He is not my child-" Chessie forced, setting down the cup angrily.

"- And this could benefit him as well. A mere child who stood up to Fenrir Greyback himself-"

"AND SO DID I." Chessie yelled. There was a terse moment as she gasped to collect herself.

She sat back down and forced her hands to clasp in her lap as she continued in a forced civility, "I am the one who infiltrated the werewolf camp. I am the one who sent so many to the werewolf imprisonment camp. Their hatred is directed at me. I saved six children, and only two of whom survived the war ultimately. Ambrose is not my child. He is not my responsibility. As a Slytherin, he and his brother are yours. However," Chessie tried to remain civil even though she was shaking with the effort, "if either of them tell me that they feel like you are using them, I would not hesitate to be the last face you see."

They stared at each other for several minutes, wizened professor versus temperamental newcomer. Chessie gasped for a deep breath and sat back down.

"Food for thought, at least," she finished anticlimactically. Slughorn said nothing, studying her closely in silence. "However you have quite put me off my tea, and I have a class at three. I need to go prepare."

She got up and left without a farewell. Slughorn watched her depart and sipped his tea. His plans didn't involve her approval. She would see the connections he had, and the desire to be critically important. After the tea was gone, Slughorn rose and pinched some Floo Powder from the small snuffbox he kept it in, and strode towards his fireplace. He had some calls to make.


	5. Anger and Slughorn

Chessie was surprised when Ambrose and Absolom both entered her office during her office hours the first week of December.

She glanced up at both of them from the stack of essays she had been grading, and gestured to the visitor chairs facing her desk. "What's up?" she asked the twelve year olds.

Ambrose, pale and greyish-haired despite his youth, remained silent. Absolom sat down with his dark curls and dark blue eyes, watching his twin brother. Chessie sat down in her chair. They all looked around awkwardly. Ambrose refused to meet her eyes. Chessie grew suspicious. Just before she was about to speak, Absolom spoke up.

"Professor," he began tentatively, "We are having trouble with our dormmates. We need help."

Chessie scowled at the idea. "Unfortunately, Professor Slughorn is your head of house-"

"We went to him, sorry," Absolom interrupted. "He said that it would work itself out."

"Okay," Chessie said, studying the boys. Ambrose had yet to meet her eyes. "Ambrose?"

He finally lifted his gaze from the floor, and Chessie saw the big black eye he had. "Ambrose!" she gasped.

He stared back stubbornly, refusing to comment. Absolom waited as well.

"What happened here?" Chessie asked sympathetically. Apparently they hadn't expected that, because both boys' faces suddenly studied hers.

"So Ambrose was going to his trunk to get his History of Magic textbook, yeah," Absolom started in his posh accent. "But it turns out our dormmates were in the room. They don't like either of us and wait for us to be apart. Well, we were apart for that and Ambrose came back up with this shiner." He gestured at his brother's swollen eye.

Ambrose stared stubbornly over Chessie's shouder. He scowled at nothing, waiting.

"Ambrose," Chessie said gently. The young boy didn't acknowledge.

"Ambrose," she said slightly firmer. He squinted slightly but kept staring ahead.

"What happened, Wat?" she almost whispered, and the boy's resolve crumbled. The story came out in a hurry, and Chessie had to fight herself to remain calm. The three other boys in Slytherin second year had ganged up on poor Ambrose while his brother was in the common room. The bruises were from that. What they had said, Ambrose hadn't shared. It was several minutes before Chessie spoke again.

"Absolom, please leave us for a moment," she finally said. The boy nodded and stood up.

"Yes Professor." he left. She doubted he had gone far though. Chessie stood up and strode around her desk to where Ambrose was sulking, and got on her knees. She looked at his bruised face, and before she could stop herself, she had pulled up a corner of her robes, spit on it, and was cleaning the scuffmarks off her student's face.

"Ambrose, what happened?"

The boy didn't react.

"Wat, what the hell," she said gently. The boy's resolve crumbled.

"They have been doing this sort of thing all semester. I like Absolom but it would be cool to make friends but any time I wander they are there, waiting."

He sniffled, his eyes wet but tears stubbornly not falling.

"I want to make friends," he pouted, not meeting her eyes. Chessie's heart broke. They had worked so hard to orient him back into society, just for this to happen. She had no idea what to do.

"Am I the first to know about this?" she asked softly, grabbing a tissue and wiping his face off.

"Yes," he barely whispered. She cleaned him up, and then Chessie sent him on his way with his brother.

And then, Chessie got mad.

"Oy, Slughorn," she said the moment she reached the Head Table at supper. Slughorn winced while shoveling chicken on his plate.

"Er, yes?"

"I have a bone to pick with you," she said in a low voice. George called it her parenting voice, when she got low and dangerous. She angrily plopped down next to him, between Slughorn and McGonagall. Both noticed.

"So my boy Ambrose, in your house, has been bullied all semester," she said. "Apparently they came to you about it, too. And I don't know about you, but the students are supposed to be focused on their studies, yeah? I'm wondering what sort of influence you are having over them that is encouraging this."

Slughorn gaped openly. "Well I never-"

"Well, you better learn!" Chessie growled. McGonagall swatted at her from her seat.

"Chessandra!"she hissed.

Chessie sat back abruptly. "My apologies, Headmistress. I am trying to watch out for my house's backs since their head of house doesn't seem to want to."

McGonagall frowned. "Horace, if there is any discordance, it is your responsibility-"

"There isn't, Headmistress. Professor Wharton is overreacting." he responded smoothly. Chessie scowled and envisioned eviscerating him.

"Perhaps," McGonagall said, looking directly at Chessie, "if Professor Wharton has had students come to her with complaints, you should address the matter. And I do wonder why they didn't come to you. However at the same time, Professor Wharton, you cannot show preference to any students. Even if they share your...condition."

It was a very tense supper.

"Am I being unreasonable?" she asked plaintively. Pomona Sprout gazed thoughtfully into her empty wine glass, sitting in a windowsill of Chessie's Defense classroom. Chessie sat beside her with her own glass, half empty as well. Chessie refilled Sprout's glass as the other professor thought.

"Chessie, my dear, there is only so much we can do," she finally said, sipping the refilled glass. "As wonderful as it would be to give every student confidence and the ability to solve their own problems, some lessons must be learned alone. I sympathize, I really do," she said, as Chessie winced and sighed with frustration. "But students learn just as much, if not more, from their peers as from their professors. I'm sorry, love, but that is just how it is."

Chessie slouched on her seat in the windowsill next to Sprout. "I wish I could do more," she said rubbing her temples. Sprout nodded sympathetically, downing the rest of the glass.

"I understand completely. But teaching wouldn't be so hard if we could solve all the problems." She slapped Chessie's back familiarly. "My dear, you got me a bit drunk so I am going to go to bed now. Think about it though. You can help students, but ultimately they need to learn to help themselves."

It wasn't what Chessie wanted to hear, but she accepted it from her new friend. "Thank you for your insight," she said, and helped Pomona stagger to the door. Within minutes, Chessie had staggered to her own quarters and passed out fully dressed on her own four-poster bed.


	6. A Big Fat Weasley Christmas

I would like to take a moment to say that at the time I wrote 'A Risk Worth Taking', Angelina Johnson wasn't a thing. I wrote it before all of the seventh book and Rowling's Epilogue stuff came out, and I decided to stick with a different woman marrying and having children with George Weasley.

* * *

Chessie had walked to Hogsmeade, and then apparated directly into Diagon Alley. It was finally Christmas break, and she was going home. George had said that his mum was hosting a grand Christmas feast this year, and Chessie, for once, was excited to go. The last two years she had to be dragged, but this time, after a semester absence, the opposite was true. She would take it to her grave but she deeply enjoyed the feeling of being surrounded by loved ones. It was such a stark contrast to her own upbringing.

She left the apparition area and strode cheerfully, for her, up the Alley towards the shop. The bell rang as she entered, and she noticed that nothing had changed. The same items were for sale, the same decorations and advertisements were up. This was worrying. However, she heard a loud bang from the back room and a smile escaped before she could suppress it. George was experimenting again, finally.

Pulling the curtain aside, she called out into the shadows of the lab room. "George? I'm home!"

Out of the shadows, a ginger blur engulfed her in a gigantic embrace. "Chessie!" it said happily. She giggled despite herself, glad none of the students were here to see, and hugged back.

"If I would have known you would be like this, I would have left long ago!" she teased. George let up and smiled elatedly at her, brown eyes light.

"I had the best dream last night," he said, holding her hand and pulling her further into the lab, "about a charm that would make chocolate frogs try to run away before children can open them! Can you just see it, packaging hopping around all crazy-like." She laughed as he demonstrated, and it was like there hadn't been five months since they had last seen each other. It was marvelous.

That evening, just before the food was done, Rose came in and Chessie had another reunion. Her girl Rose was flourishing, even with living in two worlds. The gigantic hug lasted for nearly two minutes before Chessie finally released the nine year old.

"How is school? How are your grades?" Chessie asked seriously, causing Rose to laugh. Her blue eyes closed in laughter behind her plastic framed glasses, and she went in for another hug on her adopted mother figure.

"It is fantastic. I have perfect marks! How is school for you?" Rose asked cheerfully, absently shoving her glasses back up her nose. She was still gawky, but two- plus years of living in a home with plenty of food had given her a sturdy vitality. Her skin was glowing, her eyes were bright. Chessie couldn't ask for more. George had done good in her absence.

The three of them talked nonstop through supper, Chessie happily gossiping about professors and students alike, Rose asking tons of questions, and George laughing at some of the antics students (and professors) had gotten into already. He had already promised to send a bottle of sambuca that Charlie had sent them from Romania back with her for the spring term to share with Professor Sprout, as well as a few of his more clever charms for Flitwick.

An owl crashed into the open window, which took a certain amount of lack of finesse to accomplish, and staggered into the small kitchen the family was sitting at. It was Errol, the Weasley family owl. George reached over and pulled a letter off, tilting a pan for the owl to scrape some treats off. He read it briefly and winced.

"What?" Chessie and Rose asked simultaneously. "Jinx," Rose added helpfully. Chessie ignored her.

"George, what is it? Christmas eve supper?"

"Yeah," he admitted, passing the letter over. Chessie took it and read.

"Dear George, Chessie, and Rose,

"With the season in full swing, Arthur and I wanted to invite all of you to our annual Christmas supper at the Burrow. Bill, Fleur, and Victoire are going to be there, as will Charlie, Percy, his girlfriend, Ron and Hermione, and Harry if he can make it, with Teddy maybe. I think it would be wonderful if we could all have a giant Weasley Christmas like we did during your childhood. Please let me know if you are up to it this year. Love, Mum."

Chessie finished narrating, and set the letter down. "So?" she asked George, who was suddenly refusing her gaze. "We were already going to visit your mum and dad anyway.

"..." he muttered. She snorted.

"Permit me to guess," she said. "But what if all they think of is the Weasley twins, and not just George?"

He grimaced. "Yes."

"And since everyone will be there, it will be hard to run away."

"I wouldn't be running away," George said. "Just...maybe throwing a firecracker and Apparating back here while everyone is distracted."

Rose set down her spoon and reached out to pat George's hand gently. "But Chessie will be mean to anyone you want to talk to, and I have so many hugs stored up."

George smiled at her, grasping her tiny hand gratefully in his. "That is true," he said, chuckling. Chessie agreed.

"Very true. I'll fight anyone. Except your mum. She is terrifying."

That got a full laugh. "Fine. Chessie, you run security and Rose, you are my distraction," George said, grinning mischeviously. Both the women nodded, and they all plotted maneuvers for the big family dinner while they ate.

They showed up via Floo right as supper was beginning in order to avoid all the small talk. "Mum!" George yelled, hearing several voices from the garden.

"George? Are Chessie and Rose with you? Come out, we saved seats for you!" Arthur yelled back cheerfully. For a moment, George froze, staring at the grandfather clock with it's 'Fred' hand leaning gently against the glass but no longer attached.

Chessie took his arm and Rose lingered despite her growling stomach. Nine years old or not, she knew where her loyalties lie. Chessie had even tried to brush her dark hair for George's mother, taming it from full afro into a sort of wavy down-do. They made their way to the yard, where so many Weasleys were gathered. Countless amounts of Weasleys, by Chessie's reasoning. She could identify roughly eight of them, though far more were present. It turned out to be an entire family reunion meal, including people who weren't technically family, and it took a lot of bullying for her to wrangle the seat across from George somewhere down the third table extension. Rose was over at the far end of the last table, but Chessie wasn't worried about her. The girl would cheerfully talk anyone's ears off.

The dinner progressed, no less than fifteen conversations going at once and the occasional explosion from suspiciously near George. Rose was completely enamored by little Teddy Lupin and baby Victoire, and was peppering Harry Potter and Fleur relentlessly with questions about the babies. Chessie was forcing herself to be extra talkative and social despite the inner pain she felt from having so much interaction with these ridiculously pleasant people. She shared many of the same stories that she had told George and Rose, at a few memorable moments doing impressions as well once the wine started to kick in. Even George was smiling and had a few minor stories to pitch in.

Fortunately, the lack of a twin, while noticed, wasn't commented on or brought up. The babies and new faces at the table were far more interesting. Charlie had come in from Romania, Percy had brought a woman with him, and the antics of the children kept everybody occupied. George caught Chessie's eye while she was arguing with Fleur over robes (it was grasping a bit but Chessie generally settled on anti- anything, in this case anti-fashion industry). She turned towards him. 'Time to go', he mouthed, nodding at Rose, who was slouched over in her custom pink Weasley sweater at the end of the table, eyes almost closed. They stood up and began the long, arduous process of departing from a Weasley family event. George gently scooped up Rose, who curled her arms up around his neck and leaned her head against his chest.

Chessie caught Molly smiling gently at the sight and winced. She had started dropping hints about grandchildren and weddings and Chessie was just not ready to start that battle with the woman who was dead set on being her mother-in-law. She had discussed it with George before the war had ended- she wasn't even sure if she could have children, now. Either way she wasn't ready to yet. Marriage had been tabled for the time being, with so many emotional scars needing to be addressed first.

Nevertheless, they made it back to the fireplace and then home.


	7. Nobody Expects the Hogwarts Inquisition

The week before the school year was to resume, Chessie received two letters- a notice from the Ministry asking for her to come in for a disciplinary hearing, and a letter from McGonagall confirming the meeting time and some unprofessional remarks about the governors' usage of her time. She had been dreading this, though she was also surprised that it had been longer than she was expecting- parent complaints about a werewolf teaching their students. Reading through McGonagall's letter, though, Chessie was wryly amused at the level of detail and documentation McGonagall said she was going to use to fight to keep her Defense professor if the Governors proved stubborn.

George came too, in his brown WWW suit with the gold pinstripes and vest. They made an odd pair to look at and were certainly drawing looks as they signed in at the main desk of the Ministry building. George's bright red hair, multi-colored suit, and partial ear on one side, and then Chessie, demurely dressed in a modest black dress under her black teaching robes. She couldn't change her eyes, the amber color that seemed almost to reflect light, but she had pulled out her strongest pomade and coaxed her hair into a tight bun. She enjoyed wearing black, it complimented her dark skin nicely.

When Chessie took the quill to sign her own name, the ink came out red instead of black.

"What happened with the quill, there?" George asked. The scrawny little clerk adjusted his glasses to look and instantly became flustered.

"Er, you will need to sign this other document as well, ma'am," he stuttered, pulling out another document with 'Department of Magical Creatures' across the top. Chessie scoffed.

"What is this?" she said with irritation. The little clerk grimaced.

"Werewolf checklist. Mandatory signature or you can't go any further. Sorry." Chessie noted some whispering going on down the line that was forming behind her and willed herself not to show how embarrassing this was getting. Also, demeaning. And infuriating.

"This is why werewolves even form armies," she muttered blackly. The little clerk's eyes grew wide. "Oh shut it and pass the list."

She signed the document and deliberately ignored George's consoling look, blazing past him across the floor to get as much distance between what just happened as possible.

They approached the staircases to the different levels of the building.

"Department of Magical Education," Chessie said blackly. George walked beside her and gently took her hand.

"If it is of any assistance," he whispered, "I brought some Fizzing Whizbees for your use if the Board fires you."

Chessie snorted and her tension released a bit. "I will keep that in mind."

They entered the room still holding hands. Chessie immediately noticed Slughorn and Flitwick sitting with Headmistress McGonagall, and a suspicion that Slughorn may have orchestrated this began to form. She said nothing, demurely seating herself with her boyfriend in the seats directly in front of the Governors. They were lined behind a large, raised desk facing a central table, where McGonagall, Chessie, and George were seated, with rows behind that for observers and personnel.

"As it is now ten o'clock, we will begin," the centermost Governor- or rather, Governess- stated, glancing at a small pocketwatch. She was an average-looking witch, hardly past middle age, with large black spectacles and the sharpest point to her witches' hat that Chessie had ever seen. It looked sharp enough to impale things on. Her voice was low, steady, and so regulated that her emotions were utterly disguised. "This board meeting has been called to address the nature of six recent complaints that we have received from parents of current Hogwarts students. The Board of Governors is aware and has previously approved the appointment of Chessandra Wharton to teach, with several conditions attached. One of these conditions was that upon receiving more than five official complaints, that a meeting such as this would be called to review the nature of the complaints and, if needed, revoke the position from Ms. Wharton."

The head governess gestured towards the portly elder sitting beside her. "Governor Alcott, please share the complaints."

Chessie slowly grew in fury on the inside as they were read aloud, one by one. The six complaints were far too specific to have come from parents. No child would write home with that level of detail, and few parents would decide to write to get a teacher fired so calmly and with such exacting syntax. McGonagall gently nudged Chessie, and she realized her expression was far too irritated to be appropriate. She sat back and forced a neutral expression. On her other side, George didn't bother changing his expression from utter skepticism. He had a hand over his pants pocket, where she knew the Fizzing Whizbees to be.

"-At this point, we would like insight from Headmistress McGonagall as to the validity of these accusations. Please, when you are ready."

McGonagall rose slowly, studying each governor in turn with what Chessie mentally called her 'teacher face'- that stern, displeased expression that every Hogwarts student recognizes. She strode around the desk. "First of all, I want to say, on the record, that these accusations sound utterly made up. Not only are they all about Professor Wharton's condition- lycanthropy, in case any of you forgot," she added caustically, "But not a single one addresses her educational methodology, classroom behavior, coursework, lesson plans, professional relationship with her students and peers, or anything even remotely related to the quality of the education she is dispensing. Professor Wharton has more than overcome the issues related to her condition in quite a useful way. Among those six complaints, how many letters commending the professor have you received?" She paused, raising an eyebrow.

"Thoreau?" the Head Governess asked an aide seated in the corner.

"Twenty-seven," the aide called Thoreau replied. "Four over the course load, three regarding Professor Wharton's skill as a teacher, and twenty commending the guest speaker system she started for her classes while she is out."

Chessie blinked. People liked her? That really shouldn't have come as a surprise, but positive feedback had always baffled her. She knew that students already were enjoying the informal air of the guest speakers- in addition to Bill Savage, she had gotten Neville Longbottom and Luna Lovegood to come speak as well, and that wasn't going to be impressive at all when Harry Potter was scheduled to come in the spring. If she still had her job by then, which it was increasingly looking like she would. George had quite a few connections from the Order of the Phoenix, and Chessie had barely delved into the list of potential speakers. She had enough for years.

"I would think that the ratio of positive comments to negative would offset a potential disciplinary hearing. Apparently not," McGonagall said. "But if the ridiculous nature of this hearing isn't obvious enough, I have brought several character witnesses and statements attesting to the actual facts around Professor Wharton's presence at Hogwarts."

She set a stack of letters on the desk in front of the Head Governess, who picked them up with interest and started flipping through. There were several minutes of silence as the letters of recommendation were passed around among the governors.

"Although it is not standard procedure," the Head finally spoke, setting down a particularly lengthy letter, "I move to skip directly to the ruling."

"Seconded," a sallow yet young governor said.

"As Head Governess of the Board of Governors for Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, I move to dismiss all allegations against Professor Chessandra Wharton and continue her employment on the conditions previously established."

The entire board gave their assents, and the Head Governess scribbled a note on a document. "Very well. The motion passes unanimously. Professor Wharton, whatever you are doing in class is working. Please continue. Dismissed!" She banged the gavel, and the Governors filed out.

McGonagall looked quite smug as she lead Chessie, George, and Flitwick out of the room. Slughorn followed, dismayed.

As they all bid farewells and moved to go their separate ways, Chessie and Slughorn's eyes met.

"I look forward to another semester teaching with you," he said politely, offering his hand. Chessie took it, squeezing far too hard.

"As do I. But perhaps you should stick to sucking up to your smart students after all, because revenge really isn't your best asset."

He furrowed his brows, and then like the sun coming out from behind clouds, smiled warmly at her. "You are a most valuable asset indeed. I look forward to our next tea."


	8. Advice and Homebrew

Lots of Pottermore research in this one. I love that website. McGonagall's backstory is on there, as is Flitwick's.

Right before they parted for the spring semester, George had gotten awkward and had mentioned searching for a certain piece of jewelry passed down in his family. When Chessie had pressed, he had gotten elusive and eventually resorted to throwing a malfunctioning Whiz-bang at a wall to distract her so he could flee while she extinguished the flames.

It was only three weeks into the semester, barely mid-February, when Chessie asked to speak with McGonagall privately. She had voiced her concerns with her favorite peers, Septima Vector and Filius Flitwick, and had even bounced the idea off Pomona Sprout over post-dinner drinks one Saturday night in the greenhouses, and all three had said that if it was such a concern, to talk with Minerva.

And so here she was, waiting for admittance into the Headmistress's office. Chessie leaned casually against the wall next to the statue that guarded the entrance in what was becoming her standard black outfit and robes, checking her nails. Although she would wear anything if it came to it, Chessie's new income had given her a-free way to purchase several scandalous outfits of leather and/or blends, all in midnight black. Today she was in high-waisted black denim pants and a black puffy blouse under her robes. The gargoyle suddenly lept aside and a staircase became visible. Chessie studied it, tucked a stray mocha curl back behind an ear, and began climbing the steps bemusedly. She reached another door- a heavy oak number, complete with an iron knocker- but entered silently instead. The office was full of shelves and portraits, the shelves full of books and the portraits full of people and objects and all of whom were studying the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher and whispering as she entered. Minerva McGonagall was sitting at the large wooden desk, furiously scribbling with a quill and a half-empty inkpot nearby.

"To what do I owe this visit, Chessie?" she asked almost amicably, finishing her writing and setting it aside. Chessie frowned to herself, trying to arrange her concerns into words.

"I wanted some advice. Personal advice," she eventually said, unable to meet the Headmistress's eyes. Despite herself, Chessie found herself fidgeting with her wand. This wasn't even her professor anymmore, but her boss. Somehow the thought didn't help.

McGonagall's expression softened slightly. "On what?" she asked neutrally.

"George," Chessie said reluctantly. "I think he is plotting a proposal."

The Headmistress blinked in surprise. "Pardon?"

"Sorry- so George and I have discussed marriage in the past, but whenever I write home now, he is elusive and vague and I just have a terrible feeling he is going to propose marriage."

"So what is the issue, then?" McGonagall asked, interested at last. "Do you not want to get married?"

"I want to marry him," Chessie said firmly. "I've known this for awhile now. But my concern is what our jobs will do to that. We almost never see each other anymore. He is off in London with the shop and I am here at Hogwarts. Since I started last August, we haven't seen each other more than a handful of times and that can't be healthy for a marriage. It seems like everybody who teaches here is single and I wanted to ask someone who had been married how I can make this easier for us, if it even happens, that is. I asked Pomona and she merely said to come talk to you."

She hadn't expected McGonagall to smile sadly, or take her hat off and pull a set of glasses and a decanter of wine from her desk. "Don't tell Pomona that we are drinking her slog," she said wryly, pouring glasses for them both. "I have quite successfully told her it was garbage and gotten a lot for free over the years."

Chessie waited in quiet confusion as a glass was filled and offered. She took it, and the two women silently toasted and sipped the homebrew, which was actually quite delicious and robust.

"Do you know my history?" McGonagall asked after she lowered her glass.

"No," Chessie said breathlessly, intrigued. The Headmistress had always kept her private life secret. Chessie knew almost nothing other than that she had been the Gryffindor Head of House, Transfiguration professor, and was an avid Quidditch fan.

"Quite a few years ago, I was a professor here, and married a man I knew from my previous employment. Actually, I had refused him five times before finally agreeing to be wed- not because of him, but because of my own intransigence. We were content together, and bought a cottage in Hogsmeade. I walked home every Friday evening, and came back early every Monday morning for the academic week. On the weekends, it was just the two of us and maybe some of my nieces and nephews. It was the best three years of my life."

Chessie was enraptured. "So what happened?" she asked with amber eyes wide, the glass of homebrew forgotten in her hand.

"Oh, we were very happy. I have never regretted marry him. But he died fairly soon after we settled down. An accident happened. There was never a chance of children, but we had purchased a cottage with three bedrooms anyway. The point of this all being," suddenly McGonagall's gentle tone turned back into her normal severe style, "The longer you stall, not knowing what the future will bring, the less time you may potentially have together. I knew the Weasley twins far too well. If you marry George and desire to see each other more than a few times a year, you may be interested to know that I never sold that cottage in Hogsmeade. It would be utterly satisfying to see someone else raise a family there. If you get engaged, you would merely need to name a price and I would sell it to you."

When Chessie had finished recounting the meeting later that night, Filius Flitwick sighed.

"I was at her wedding," he admitted, fidgeting with his evening robe. "We were always close- the Sorting Hat wasn't sure what to make of either of us initially, and we bonded over that."

He fiddled with one of the books stacked high on his desk in his study. "They were so happy together. It was a bit odd due to the age difference, but their love was evident and that was all I needed."

Chessie smoothed her robes nervously. Flitwick smiled sympathetically.

"Why are you so worried about this?' he asked gently. His thick but groomed eyebrows were deliberately in a neutral position even though he leaned against his desk like the worst of gossip-mongers.

"I don't know!" Chessie exploded. "His stupid face is all I dream about and those stupid gadgets he sells are the bane of my existence and I never want to lose either of them!"

Flitwick chuckled. "So you do love him?"

"I love him so much I want to punch his stupid charming face in." Chessie blurted out furiously. "I don't even know if I can have children but if I can, they better be gingers like him because that is who their daddy would be!"

Flitwick was almost doubled over with laughter. "Oh my, this is wonderful!" he gasped.

Chessie scowled, gripping the armrests of her chair in anger and sexual frustration.

"If you would allow us, Pomona and I have been dreaming of setting up a proposal for years."

"No," Chessie interrupted. "That sounds disgustingly sentimental."

The laughter only grew in volume. Flitwick forced several deep, wheezing breaths to calm himself.

"Fine, I respect your wishes. But you know that as soon ss Pomona finds out, it is going to be an ordeal," he wheezed between guffaws. Chessie scowled. There was no telling what the two of them, plus a naturally ornery Weasley, might plan.

"Not if I can stop her," she vowed. Flitwick kept laughing as Chessie stormed out of the office.


	9. Depression Session

When Chessie approached her office towards the end of April, she saw that there were already some students waiting there- the Cenopathy twins. She sighed internally. She had just finished reading a letter from an attorney on behalf of their mother, who had been bitten by a Venemous Tentacula not long after the school year had started, and less than a week later, caught an illness that was progressing rapidly. Either thing on its own was curable, but the combination was proving impossible to treat. She had been moved to a hospice ward in St. Mungos at the beginning of the week.

Australis Cenopathy had gladly taken her long-lost werewolf son in when the war had ended, elated that, in a family with a missing war criminal husband who had abandoned her and gotten himself killed, and two of her three children attacked and kidnapped by werewolves, that something positive had finally happened. The lonely mother doted on her boys equally. Chessie had a healthy respect for the woman even if her letters were far longer than necessary.

A flash of guilt had consumed Chessie when she realized that she had never responded to the last letter, as she had read the living will the attorney had owled her. She had scribbled off a short letter response for Australis and the attorney and nearly forced the owl back out the window before donning her robes and leaving her quarters.

Judging by the looks on the boys' faces, they had received similar letters.

She didn't even stop walking, opening the door and ushering them in.

"Did you get a letter from an attorney?" she asked grimly. They both nodded silently, sitting themselves in front of her desk without comment. Chessie took her seat heavily, and they looked at everything except each other for several excruciating minutes as she frantically tried to come up with something to say. What do you say to a child who is about to lose his mother? Beyond that, what do you say to a child who had barely reunited with his mother, just beginning to get to know her after years separated?

She sighed and slumped back in her seat. The boys looked up in surprise. Chessie never showed weakness in front of students- really, in front of anyone- but she was completely stumped on how to proceed.

"You know that technically, you are supposed to go to your Head of House with issues, right? You're Slytherins. That would be Slughorn."

They glanced at each other skeptically. "He's always telling me how clever and promising I am and it is really off-putting," Ambrose said, his brother rolling his eyes and nodding slightly in agreement.

"And if it's all the same, we don't want him to know," Absolom elaborated, "Mum's got quite a lot of old money in Gringotts and if Slughorn finds out that Ambrose and I are all that and also rich on top, he'll never leave us alone. We don't want to join any clubs or go chat with strangers about things that don't matter."

They withdrew back into silence as Chessie leaned back in her chair and rubbed her temples.

"Ches- I mean, Professor?" Ambrose asked quietly, finally meeting her eyes. "She is going to die, isn't she." Absolom stared blankly at the desk, and Chessie noticed that both boys were unkempt and although dressed for class, looked far too messy.

"Alright, so, yes," Chessie admitted awkwardly. "I am so sorry."

Absolom's face was stony behind his black wavy hair.

"What is it with people in this family getting bitten by stuff," he muttered. "How long does she have left?"

"I'm not sure, to be honest," Chessie said, "But I will go talk with the Headmistress and see about pulling both of you today to visit her. That is, if you want to."

They both glared at her as though it was completely impossible for anyone to not want to visit their mother. "Yes!" they both exclaimed.

"Then get up- stand up straight, no slouching," she came around the desk and firmly corrected their ties, "For Merlin's sake fix your hair. Chins up. Now, come on."

The visit was painful, and as soon as Chessie had returned with the boys and McGonagall had seen her face, she told Chessie bluntly to go home for the weekend. For once, Chessie didn't disagree. George met her in the Leaky Cauldron barely an hour later as she shook off the ash from the fireplace.

"What's wrong? Your note said we need to talk and it needs to be in a bar? Wow, you look terrible. I mean lovely. Both. Are you stressed?"

She grinned a bit as George tried to recover and they sat down at the counter. "Very. I had a bit of a bombshell dropped on me, is all. And then I did that thing where I started thinking about my life and I got sad."

George signaled for a pint for her. "What happened?" he asked less enthusiastically. "Did you get yourself fired?"

Chessie snorted. "I've been designated as a legal guardian for the Cenopathy twins, and since it's a dying wish and Ambrose is a werewolf, I don't have the heart to say no. I feel like if I refused, the boys would be separated and they don't need that right now. Nobody else would take Ambrose in except to get at his inheritance."

"Ambrose did live with us for awhile," George reminded her. "Before the Ministry found his family."

"I know. But your flat is so small and there would be five of us stepping on each other all the time-"

"Well, not really," George said cheerfully, now that he knew the problem wasn't him. "You and the boys will only be home three months of the year, I'm either in my shop or the lab, and Rose is in school. Maybe even at Hogwarts, soon enough. That leaves Fred's room."

"Would you really be okay with changing Fred's room?" she asked cautiously. They had deliberately never discussed this before.

"Twins making way for twins, there's almost a poetic justice to it," he joked slightly less enthusiastically. "I may need help with that project." he sounded sad but thoughtful.

"The kitchen table only has three chairs," Chessie complained, to distract him.

"Two, now," George said. "One got broken."

"What? How-"

"Shh, don't worry about it. Everybody recovered." George took a deep drink from his glass. "I say it's fine, bring the boys home with you. We will make it work."

"Ugh," Chessie groaned, punching George's arm. "You sounded like your mum just then."

George almost choked on his drink and Chessie laughed.


	10. The Public Proposal

As it turned out, with mere days before the full moon in May, the scheduled speaker apologetically canceled, and George was the only person Chessie could get to come speak for her during her werewolf recovery. Thus, George entered the Great Hall the morning after the full moon, while Chessie was still sleeping off the transformations in her quarters. He arrived in a bright mood, and small talked the professors at the Head Table until Chessie showed up for supper, having been woken up and nagged by the Cenopathy boys. She wasn't sure why they were excited, but she was so sore yet so amused at their intrusive politeness that she threw on some clothes and let herself be dragged away from bed.

"My love!" George said loudly, throwing his arms wide and taking steps towards where Chessie was entering from the Grand Hall. He had on his best brown and gold suit, and Chessie was in what she called her 'public pajamas' outfit of black tights and a black sweater tunic. The Great Hall suddenly grew silent and watched. This was mortifying. She approached him anyway, her hair in full afro and skin sallow yet glowing a healthy dark brown from medical care and half a pound of chocolate.

"Er, yes?" she said bluntly. George chuckled and continued.

"I wanted this date to be remarkable," he said jovially, "And Professor Flitwick and Professor Sprout gave me exactly the assistance I needed to make this memorable," he said happily. Chessie really wanted to scowl at her colleagues but was utterly distracted by her boyfriend.

"You are stubborn, cynical, sometimes ruthless, and fiercely protective of those who you consider your 'people'," George said. "But that fighting spirit is part of why I love you. I knew it from the first time you tripped me into a puddle in Diagon Alley." he pulled a battered, weatherworn case from his pocket and dropped to one knee, right there in the center of the Great Hall with almost a thousand pairs of eyes watching.

"Would you marry me?" he proposed.

Chessie didn't faint no matter how much she wanted to. What came out instead was a sort of squeak, in front of the entire student body. The kiss, though, would influence the children for years. They barely separated long enough for George to place the modest yet elaborate ring upon her third finger. George eventually released her from his embrace, adjusted his formal suit, and took a seat at the Head Table amidst the celebrations of Chessie's peers.

"How lovely!" Sprout gushed, wrapping her arms around both of them. "You must have your wedding here at the school!"

"Talk about a dramatic streak," Flitwick teased Chessie, still happily in George's arms staring at the surprisingly large ring on her finger.

"I'll get my revenge on both of you," she said absently, turning her hand in the candlelight. It didn't look like any of the rings in style at the moment, and once the hubbub dialed down, she intended to ask about it. But for now, Hogwarts was elated with the idea of the first post-war wedding on site.

It was weird seeing George in her office. He sprawled casually across one of the two guest chairs she had arranged to face her desk. Given the situation, though, she had opted to get together not at her own desk, but in his lap, perching across George's thighs as though that wasn't completely inappropriate work behavior.

"In front of everybody, really," Chessie started to chastise until George interrupted her.

"I didn't buy this ring," he said, laying the bait.

"...What?" Chessie asked, seated steadily on George's lap. He pulled her hands in close, grasped firmly in his own. She took a moment to appreciate the juxtaposition of her dark hands captured in his larger page freckled hands.

"The ring I proposed to you with is a family heirloom," he said gently, massaging Chessie's hands and arms, "And it took me months to get this planned."

"How so?" Chessie murmured, temporarily complacent upon her love's lap even if it was in her own office.

"I knew you needed something special," George said, "and Mum forced me to ask her to help. This ring," he pulled her left hand with the surprisingly sparkling ring upon it, "is an heirloom."

Chessie scooted off George's lap into the other chair in her office for guests, yet not releasing her beloved's hands.

"My grandfather Septimus Weasley," George continued, kissing Chessie's knuckles, "searched long and hard for the perfect ring for his hopeful betrothed, Cedrella Black. She was a Slytherin, and he was completely in love with her despite being a Gryffindor himself. Much like I am with you. Well, I was able to locate the ring and my uncle gave it over once I explained-." George hestitated, and kneeled down in front of Chessie once more.

"My grandfather, a pureblood Weasley, found what he thought was the perfect ring for his beloved, a Slytherin woman from the House of Black. They lived their whole lives happily together, having three children and seven biological grandchildren," George explained. "And I wanted to propose with this ring as an extension of that. I was in Gryffindor, you were in Slytherin. I want to grow a family with you, Chessie," he said, "Even if it isn't meant to happen the standard way. I want us to be together forever. I love you."

Chessie reconsidered the ring on her finger. It had a central diamond surrounded by tiny diamonds, and the band had two metal heart shapes on either end of the gems. The rest of the band was simple gold. She loved the understated elegance.

"I love you too," she whispered happily and had no issues bursting into tears in front of her favorite person.

Eventually they moved from the two uncomfortable chairs in her office to her bed, but before anything naughty could happen Chessie passed out. Transforming into a wolf and back and then getting engaged finally exhausted her. Once she was asleep, George kissed her cheek, adjusted her blankets around her, and left to go speak for her classes.

When she woke up a few hours later, Chessie would discover that he had charmed her sheets to adhere to the bed and that she was trapped there until he returned.

She was almost late for a staff meeting the week before the end-of-year exams. Just as the staff door was closing, she threw herself through it and nearly collided with Hagrid. Glancing surreptitiously around to judge if anyone had seen her, she straightened her robes and took a seat at the table next to Sprout.

McGonagall began discussing how they were going to go about sitting and scheduling the examinations, especially with the second years in the situation of being tested for two years' worth of knowledge in one. Chessie felt a kick on her leg and glanced over at Sprout.

"We need to start discussing wedding plans," she whispered. Chessie glared at her discreetly and kicked her back.

"Ow," Sprout whispered, pretending to take a note on some parchment she had brought to the meeting.

"You're going to have to fight Molly Weasley on that one. That woman is wedding crazy."

"I thought it looked like you were getting a ridiculous amount of mail lately."

"Pomona," McGonagall interrupted them, "how are you conducting your exams this year?"

The conversation was dropped for the time being. Truthfully, she had been determinedly ignoring real life concerns and was focusing completely on academic issues. The tests she was going to give had been finished and sitting in stacks on her desk for weeks now.

It wasn't fair to George or Rose that she was dreading going home. She loved them both dearly. No, it was the freshly-rennovated room that no longer held any traces of Fred, but had a new bunk bed and bedroom furniture crammed into it. They had even repainted the walls so the room would seem a little more welcoming. It was the 30-something-year-old woman lying in a hospice bed at St. Mungo's who was expected to die at any time now and orphan her children. It was when they were planning to go to the Burrow and announce the engagement and be congratulated by what seemed like thousands of redheaded soon-to-be-in-laws. It was that Absolom and Ambrose would be going with them. For such a happy year, there had been a surprising amount of heartbreak.

So for now, Chessie focused on preparing her students for exams.


	11. Stuffing the House Full

Last depressing chapter, I promise. I tried to end it on a positive note though, just for my readers.

Oh my, we made it through Year 1. Wow. Seriously, I had been batting this story around in my head for ages and finally just sat down and started writing it out. Pretend to enjoy the constant updates while they last.

* * *

Chessie almost threw the book she was reading across the room in surprise when the door knocker sounded throughout the flat. Rose nearly fell out of her chair.

"Are we expecting company?" she asked Rose, who shook her head and frowned. They answered the door, revealing a tall, serious-looking wizard with greying hair and very nice robes, and two shorter people- the boys, Chessie realized in horror.

"Miss Wharton," he began in a low, steady voice, as Ambrose abruptly gave her a long hug. "It is time for your custody of these young men to begin."

"Oh, boys," she said sadly, fiercely hugging Ambrose back and pulling Absolom in too. "I'm so, so sorry."

Rose stood silently behind them in the room, watching solemnly.

"Rose," Chessie said softly, "Go get George." The girl squeezed past and rushed into the joke shop. Chessie looked up at the attorney. "Please, come in."

By the time they had all congregated in the den and Chessie had finished distributing tea, George had finished sneaking his way out of the shop and come upstairs. He had finally relented and hired some employees and spent most of his time in the back room, coming up with new ideas. It seemed that the breakthrough after Fred's death had ended, and finally new products were hitting the shelves- and the classrooms, at times.

It was a little unfair to Rose, who was squished between Ambrose and the sofa armrest, but Chessie sat in the center of the sofa with a boy under each arm as the attorney explained the conditions of the will and basic procedure that Mrs. Cenopathy had laid out.

"Do you have any questions?" Chessie and George glanced at each other and shook their heads. "Then in that case I will leave you be. My door is always open, or you may owl me at any time. The funeral will be on Wednesday at ten in the morning. I will send you details. My deepest condolences, boys."

They sat like that for almost fifteen minutes before finally breaking the hug. The boys looked around a little lost at the small den, taking in their new homes. George discreetly moved their trunks with their only possessions into the room they would be living in before motioning Rose into the kitchen, leaving Chessie with the orphans.

"Have you eaten? Is there anything you need right now?" she asked softly.

"Is this your home?" Absolom asked quietly, looking at a few of the family photos on the wall. Chessie was in about a third of them, the rest being the main Weasley family unit on some of their various vacations over the years.

"It is," Chessie said.

"Ambrose, you lived here, right?" he turned to look at his silvery-haired brother. Ambrose nodded, getting up as well.

"I'll show you around," he said. "Oh, and you can finally meet Rose."

Chessie took that as her cue to back gracefully out, joining George and Rose in the kitchen.

"I think we are good for now. George, you can go back downstairs. Rose, go be my cheerful hostess."

As Rose skipped back down the hall to the den, George gave Chessie a big hug. "Are you sure?" he whispered in her ear.

"Yeah. I don't think it has really hit them yet. Maybe it will at the funeral, I'll need you then for sure."

The boys were clearly devastated and scared well into midsummer. They were far quieter than Chessie had been used to at Hogwarts, and spent quite a bit of time talking to each other in their room. However they were also curious, and Rose had the uncanny ability to get anyone to relax. She had won over Absolom within a day, and gave both boys tons of attention.

It was hard to believe that Chessie had adopted her three years before, after the attack that had left them both werewolves. So much had changed since then. But Rose- pale, blonde, bespectacled Rose- had flourished with Chessie and George. She took it upon herself to help the boys adjust to such a different lifestyle with the experience of someone who had done it themselves.

Chessie was in the kitchen assembling some new chairs, and the three children were in the den. The boys were trying to get a start on their summer homework, and Rose was utterly enchanted by the concept of homework about magic. She was peppering them with endless questions about magic, about their old home, about their classes, and anything else that she could think of. The boys seemed to love the attention though. Ambrose had mentioned in secret one day to George that their family home had always been so big, empty, and quiet. No one ever came over and all the neighboring houses were either empty or the neighbors avoided each other. He loved how many people stopped by, and the noise coming up from the street below.

It had sounded lonely and depressing, and Chessie had to remind her fiance that her childhood home was just like that as well. She didn't have an expectation of ever going back, considering she hadn't seen her parents in over five years and had no desire to. She had packed her trunk and run away, and built back up from there. They had teased her for unpacking the boys' trunks the day they moved in, but she didn't want them to feel out of place in her home for even a day.

She groaned in frustration as she realized that the table was too small to fit that many chairs around and kicked it lightly.

"Chessie, are you okay?" Rose called from the living room.

"Yes, love," she said back. She tried rearranging the few movable items in the kitchen to see if there was a way to make it work, eavesdropping on the living room.

"Do you think I'll go to Hogwarts with you guys someday?" Rose asked cheerfully.

"Maybe," Ambrose replied. "Depends on if you get your acceptance letter."

"It always arrives by your eleventh birthday," Absolom explained.

"And then I would get robes and books and maybe a pet and I can go learn magic too, like Chessie and George and you guys! You said you lived in houses that have names or something? Which one do you think I would be in?"

"Hufflepuff," both boys said at once. Rose giggled.

"But don't get your hopes up," Ambrose cautioned. "Your parents were muggles. Technically you are a muggle too."

"Yeah but my aunt went to Hogwarts! She's a witch!" Rose sounded disappointed.

"That doesn't mean you are."

"Okay, but...maybe. And then we can be friends at school!"

There was silence for a bit.

"Merlin, you would be such a typical Hufflepuff," one of the boys muttered before finally shooing Rose away so they could finish their reading.


	12. The DADA Curse Broken

I have this headcanon that I incorporated into this story that Regulus Black didn't die- he faked it and ran away so he could keep researching horcruxes and whatnot for Dumbledore. But by being 'dead', he didn't have any money and ended up a professor at Ilvermorny, safely far away enough that he could still use his own name, but not so far that news didn't still reach him of Voldemort's return in the mid 1990s...

It is fall 2000.

Chessie had to return to Hogwarts a week before the students arrived, leaving George with not one, but three children and a booming business. She had apologized, sort of, before running out the door elatedly.

As she walked through the massive wooden doors into the castle, Chessie found herself smiling.

"Chessie!" a woman's voice yelled out, and Chessie saw the plump older witch just before she barreled into her with a huge hug. "The curse is officially broken!"

"What?" Chessie laughed and shoved Pomona Sprout off of her. The shorter woman's hair was just as crazy as Chessie remembered, grey curls and flyaway strands all over, and the tip of her patched-up hat was just barely taller than Chessie's head.

"Did you never notice how Defense professors only last a year?" she said excitedly as Flitwick and Vector came in from the doorway where they had just arrived themselves.

"Okay, so no, I did not get myself fired," Chessie smirked affectionately. "Somehow. I did try."

"There was a curse on the position for decades, had to do with You-Know-Who. But when he finally was defeated, it lifted! And here you are!"

"It is nice to see that we may finally be able to keep the same Defense professor," Septima Vector pitched in, smiling as she approached. Chessie was looking forward to their arithmancy-centric teas this year.

"I'm not sure about all that," Chessie said, "But I am back for whatever reason. Honestly, a week to settle in and decompress after being in an apartment crammed with people sounds lovely."

"Oh, that's right," Flitwick said sympathetically, "How are the boys taking their mother's passing?"

"It was rough for awhile," Chessie admitted. She sighed. "George took it suspiciously well too, when we finally got rid of Fred's stuff. All three of them had a rough few weeks there in the middle, but I think they were generally okay by the time I left this morning."

Pomona patted Chessie's arm gently. "I am proud of you for helping them," she said gently.

They all chatted at once as they seated themselves around the staff table that afternoon, joined by the rest of the professors. The friendly-looking Muggle Studies professor sat next to Chessie, and it took her embarrassingly long to realize that she hadn't spoken to the woman all the previous year.

"You completely ignored me last year," the youngish professor jokingly chastised when Chessie confessed that. She was surprised to hear an American accent. "But I wasn't worried about it, we never really interacted. It was my first year teaching here last year too. You probably don't remember- I'm Angelica Black. I came from Ilvermorny. Taught there for ten years, fell for a British guy teaching over there kind of embarrassingly fast, and came back to England with him during the war. Actually I think our boys are best friends."

They shook hands cordially as Chessie frantically searched her memory for the Cenopathy twins' friend's name. They had told stories of their trio during the year but- Corvus. Corvus Black. How had she not recognized the name, and who was this professor's husband? All the Blacks were women or dead, Chessie had thought.

"Chessie Wharton," Chessie introduced herself awkwardly, "Um, so the surname-?"

"Regulus faked his death," Angelica said cheerfully. "I'm not sure how much detail I can go into, but it had to do with a secret society and he worked as a researcher in hiding for them. I've really started to realize the stigma associated with his family name on this side of the ocean, glad he didn't mention it beforehand or I probably would have sent my boys to Ilvermorny."

"Were... they... born in America?" Chessie wasn't sure how to judge when she had asked too many questions. She volunteered some information as a compromise. "My parents were- are still- very anti-muggle. I am not but my...fiance and I are both pureblood. I have a muggle sort-of-daughter."

Angelica smiled confidently. "My sons and I are considered half-blood, and proud of it. My parents were both wizards from no-maj- I mean, muggle- families. When my sisters or I misbehaved we had to do our chores the muggle way. We've tried to raise the boys to be more open-minded regardless of which country we lived in. Although we don't have this stigma about bloodlines over there, it still used to amaze me how little wizards know about muggle life. It's even worse over here. It's easy to be afraid of something you don't know. I figured I could help change that."

"That is what Chessie is trying to do for werewolves," By this point, Pomona, the staff's biggest gossip, had overheard enough to join in the conversation as they all turned to chatting about the various wizarding schools.

At the head corner of the table, Slughorn sulked. Nobody was talking to him. Flitwick started a conversation with him purely out of pity, since he was too far up the long table to join in the womens'.

The Friday before school started, Chessie was preparing for the next week's start of term classes when Slughorn knocked at her office door. She let him in her office, and sat down in the chair next to him instead of across the desk like she was used to. It was further away to her desk throne, and she was feeling too intellectually drained to make the effort to undermine Slughorn's authority.

"Evening," she said cautiously. Slughorn bowed respectfully.

"Good evening to you as well." he said magnanimously. "I was wondering if you were interested in a cup of tea. I have some burdens on my chest that I would like to get off before we begin our usual terse academic relationship."

Chessie frowned slightly but acquiesced. "Sure," she said. She pulled a kettle out from behind a false book shelf in one of the bookcases, and Slughorn quietly took over in preparing the tea. She sat back down, watching. She had forgotten, or maybe they hadn't been there before, how dark the shadows under his eyes were, or how deep the wrinkles around his eyes and hands were. It looked as though he had aged considerably over the summer. Or maybe she had just noticed?

"Chessie, I am not completely sure what I did to get on your bad side last year but I wish to make amends," he said, sitting back down as the water slowly came to a boil. "I am tired. I hadn't expected to come out of retirement in the first place, but with the war, and then the school being repaired and reopened, I felt obligated to see it out. But I feel that this year will be one of my final years teaching here, and since you are the only other Slytherin on staff, that would mean that when I retire, the Slytherin students would rely on you."

Chessie was silent.

"I would like to cultivate a relationship in which I can assist you as needed in learning about the responsibilities of the Slytherin Head of House, as well as quietly transfer my responsibilities over so that my final years here will be relatively stress-free. It is almost unheard of for a new professor to be lifted to the status of Head, but these are different times."

He rose, with difficulty, and removed the whistling kettle from Chessie's fireplace, pouring them both cups. She stirred a lump of sugar around hers pensively as Slughorn added cream to his.

"Are you settling for me or genuinely want me to succeed you," she asked. Slughorn chuckled.

"A bit of both, to be honest. I admit I was angry when I found out that students were coming to you with their concerns instead of me, but I found the quiet quite pleasant after a bit. And then I realized: our Slytherin students, pureblood, clever, conniving students, were beginning to treat you as an authority. You!" he exclaimed, before hastily backpedaling at Chessie's scowl. "Not that there is anything wrong with that, but a Slytherin putting their respect towards a werewolf is quite the oddity. Somehow though, with you, that isn't a barrier. They trust you. Not just the Cenopathy twins, bless them," he ignored Chessie's wince, "but even the descendants of the Great 28 at least tolerate you. It is quite remarkable!"

There was some quiet as they both sipped their tea and contemplated.

"I've only been here for a year," Chessie said eventually, "And I bullied you the entire time."

"You have a strong personal code," Slughorn said. "That stubbornness will benefit you."

She considered for several minutes. It was true that the students had taken to visiting her instead of Slughorn, on one memorable occasion coming up to her at the Head Table despite Slughorn being mere feet away. They fought on every issue, Slughorn preferring to pull connections and Chessie preferring discrete tactics to reach their goals. But maybe...

"You tried to get me fired last year." she reminded him.

"You were able, with minimal effort, to entirely thwart that plan. It was only then that I began to see your true potential," Horace admitted.

"If I said yes, what would happen next?"

"I would insist on you coming to tea more often, but instead of spending the time listening to you insult me, I would impart expectations for the role and advice to you on how to handle even the most difficult Slytherin students. But you really must start trying to view your career here in the long-term."

Chessie sighed and agreed, and they shook hands. She had never thought that far into her future before.


	13. The Current and Future Heads

"Are you two ready to go back to school tomorrow?" Chessie asked the twins on the evening of August 31st. She and George had taken the kids out into muggle London to a restaurant that a random student's parent at Rose's muggle primary school had recommended to George during a parent teacher organization meeting. Chessie couldn't stand the things as a teacher herself, so the burden was left to George. She couldn't figure out at all why he didn't seem to mind them.

The Cenopathy boys had been low-key gawking at the surrounding décor and other patrons while eating, but the question brought them back to the general dinner conversation. Chessie secretly loved how enthusiastic they were about learning how to handle new environments, and so all summer they had taken little family excursions into muggle London to distract them from their mourning.

"Definitely," Ambrose smiled. His shaggy greying hair fell into his eyes but his scarred smile was unobstructed.

"Sure," Absolom agreed with a smile of his own. "I am going to try out for Quidditch this year!"

"I am definitely not," Ambrose rolled his eyes. "I go through enough without getting nailed in the head with a bludger."

"I do not mind," Absolom retorted with an equal level of disdain. "It makes me feel alive to risk occasional concussions."

"You are both weird," Rose said wistfully over her plate of chicken. "I hope I get a Hogwarts letter this year. I turn eleven in two months, it has to be this year if it's going to happen at all."

George and Chessie's eyes met across the table. They had had several late-night discussions on how they were going to handle it when Rose didn't receive a letter, or in the event she did. There were several plans waiting in dormancy for whichever situation occurred. As the child of two muggles, the odds were very stacked against her. However, Chessie's research had uncovered a witch aunt, a wizard great-grandfather, and a squib cousin in the Carley line. There was some magic in Rose's blood, but would it be enough?

"You all seem quite desperate to get away from me," George said jokingly. The chorus of 'noooo' make them all laugh. Chessie loved this group of people more than anything, and would absolutely never admit it.

Early on the morning of September 2nd, Slughorn stopped Chessie just before she entered the Great Hall. She had spent most of the previous evening picking out her scary teacher outfit for the first day of class, had been strutting in her black leather dominatrix heels into the Great Hall, and didn't approve of having her idiom tampered with.

"I find myself in a bind," he said hurriedly while buttoning his jacket, "and I need to pop over to Hogsmeade and settle a thing real quick-"

"You should stop gambling," Chessie said scornfully, but didn't try to walk away. A stack of papers was shoved into her hands as Slughorn continued unabashed.

"-So I will be back in time for classes but regrettably, must miss breakfast. Here are the class schedules for this year, if you would just hand them out-."

Slughorn called out in gratitude over his shoulder as he shuffled across the entrance and out the doors. Chessie sighed and looked down at the pile of class schedules in her hands. They were not at all organized, but deep down she hadn't expected them to be. She muttered something rude and started trying to sort them out as she entered the Hall, her favorite stilettos clicking on the stone floor.

"You know what, who are the prefects for Slytherin?" she called out as she detoured towards the long table that Slytherin students sat at. Four surly-looking students begrudgingly indicated they were. There should have been six but for the year the school was closed for repairs. She split the pile into four somewhat equal piles and distributed them. "Alphabetize these into one pile. You have twenty minutes."

She did not pause in walking away as the prefects grumbled at having to work through their breakfast. If they didn't want to work, they shouldn't have accepted the badge. She sat down to her own meal and plotted what she privately intended to call her annual dramatic entrance for the first years in an hour.

The papers had been returned in exactly 19 minutes by a prefect boy who was obnoxiously chewing on some toast while he did so. Chessie ignored the slight, barely. She worked her way down the table distributing the schedules as the other actual Heads of House did. Several times students asked where Slughorn was.

"He had to settle a wager and asked me do this," she replied shortly so that they would stop talking to her. It was privately encouraging when students would ask in a hopeful tone, though overall she went unacknowledged. In another house, that behavior may have been insulting, but Chessie preferred invisibility so it was fine, even coming from teenagers.

After the students left for their first days of school, Slughorn finally returned. Just as the last of the food was disappearing from the tables back to the kitchens, he sauntered to the teacher's table and grabbed a plate of hot cakes.

"Could you not have organized the schedules first?" Chessie complained lightly, standing up to head to her classroom.

"Horace, where have you been?" Sprout asked less lightly. "Heads of House are supposed to be at the Start of Term Feast. You know this."

"In a way I was," Slughorn smoothly responded. "Professor Wharton and I have come to an agreement, since I am starting to anticipate my retirement in the next few years again. This time, hopefully, permanently."

"This is the first time I am hearing about this," Flitwick said calmly. Slughorn shrugged.

"It is not exciting," Chessie said flatly.

"I was retired for several years before Albus asked me to return," Slughorn said while giving Chessie the side-eye, "I would like to return to that, but not before knowing that my House will be properly cared for. To that end, I have begun delegating tasks to Chessie."

"It was more of you forcing a pile of papers into my hands and running away," Chessie said, raising an eyebrow as her plate disappeared with the rest of her breakfast on it. "I have literally had one half-piece of toast for breakfast because of you."

"Horace," Headmistress McGonagall said calmly, "We really must have a conversation one of these days. There are procedures in place for transferring Head of House responsibilities that don't involve treating professors as department interns."

"No sweat here," Chessie said. "I made the prefects organize the papers for me. They probably would have preferred to eat but so would have I."

"Nevertheless," McGonagall warned. Horace met her eyes, then dropped them and quietly left with his plate.


	14. Getting in Trouble With Students

"Werewolf Prison Break," The headlines blared across the Saturday edition of the Daily Prophet. Chessie rolled her eyes and kept reading the paper in her bed at Hogwarts. "Greyback and Followers Escape."

That part was a bit more serious. Chessie didn't have to focus at all to recall the level of pain Fenrir Greyback had inflicted on her life. She hadn't even been a goal of his; just a bystander in his quest to contaminate and control children into the perfect werewolf army. Her own reluctant heroics had lead to the curse of the werewolf being bestowed on herself as well. Her spy mission for the Ministry in the werewolf camp, her discovery and rescue of the werewolf children. Her witnessing the deaths of her new followers less than a year later at the Battle of Hogwarts. The tears afterward. The guilt. Chessie discreetly wiped her tears away and kept reading.

As with Dumbledore, Minerva McGonagall paid for the Wolfsbane Potion that kept Chessie and Ambrose (and Rose, by proxy) sane during their transformations. Chessie was very aware of how she was otherwise- remorselessly, irrevocably ferocious. Her inner werewolf had so much rage pent up.

She kept reading the article as she drew her dark green sheets closer around herself in her bed against the October chill, as well as psychosomatically at the news.

"Aurors reported the breach of the prison boundaries at 2300 hours last night, and have recovered eight of the twelve escapees. Among those still at large is Fenrir Greyback, who is considered incredibly dangerous. Do not approach him if spotted under any condition. If you suspect that there is a werewolf presence, please summon Aurors in this way-." Chessie crumpled the paper irritably into a ball and threw it on the floor.

If you suspect the terrible werewolves out there who like to bite people, she corrected internally. The media was still very biased against her kind. She tried to imagine, and failed, biting another wizard on purpose to turn them into a werewolf like herself. It seemed unfathomable to want to inflict the physical and emotional pain of her own existence onto another. Maybe this was why she was such a terrible Slytherin and werewolf. Why it haunted her that she was destined to lead them both.

On top of this, something seemed entirely off this school year. The feeling of wrongness was strongest when Chessie was near the library. It was like foreboding, the sense that something was not as it should be. She had tried to broach the subject with Madame Pince to no avail, but when she had brought it up to Headmistress McGonagall, she had frowned and promised to investigate. Chessie hadn't been sure what to make of that but was grateful to not be blown off.

It was a feeling that someone had been forgotten; that somehow, a task had been left undone. The infuriating part was that the Cenopathy boys, among several of the most magically sensitive students across various Houses, had dedicated themselves to investigating this. She liked how many of the Slytherin students were teaming up to research the issue that seemed focused on the library and their own Common Room, but as a professor was still bound by school rules to enact official responses it was beyond irritating. At least she did what she could to confiscate their research and try to figure it out herself with the aid of Flitwick, Sprout, and Angelica Black, and she occasionally dropped discrete hints back at them so they would keep her informed.

One morning, the twins and another boy came to her office just after lunch. Absolom, with his classic dark aristocratic features, Ambrose, with his telltale facial scarring and greying hair, and another boy with thick, wavy dark hair and grey eyes, were all waiting in their class robes for her as Chessie approached her office.

"Er, what?" she said unceremoniously, unlocking her office door and gesturing them inside. The boys all entered.

"Well first," Absolom said slowly, "Not sure if you've really met, but this is Corvus." He gestured to the grey-eyed boy with the classic features. He certainly looked like a Black, Chessie considered, but had something of his mother, Angelica, in his expressions that really captured her attention.

"Also though, Corvus has been hearing this voice lately, and we've been trying to figure it out but just can't."

The grey-eyed boy- Corvus- nodded reluctantly.

"Have you talked to your mother?" Chessie asked. Ambrose and Absolom didn't move, but Corvus nodded.

"She said that it was probably an auditory hallucination and likely wasn't important," the boy said. The twins agreed.

Absolom began, "the voice has been giving us directions."

"We've been researching in the library and it all adds up," Ambrose continued. Corvus sat up a bit taller. "There's a student locked in some sort of magical cell or something that is in the library."

"But madam," he said, "We don't have the power to open the gate and free her."

Chessie furrowed her brows from her seat at her desk. The boys appeared to be telling the truth. From what she had learned after her initial awkward meeting with Professor Black, they really were thick as thieves, including in earning detentions and ire of other professors. But somehow, looking at their earnest but concerned faces, Chessie suspected that they were telling the truth. She didn't talk about it much but as in tune as she was with her inner feral werewolf, she could nearly sense dishonesty, yet couldn't sense any at this time.

"Why don't you fill me in," she requested slowly. "I have confiscated notebooks from several students that have notes on this phenomenon, and it seems to be legitimate."

All three boys relaxed noticably as she said that, and began to fill her in. In the last six weeks of school, they had tracked down several students from various houses who had inexplicably heard a young female voice asking for help, who sounded sad and lonely and frustrated. All of these had happened within thirty feet of the library doors, leading an influx of students trying to determine what was happening. Madam Pince had started kicking students out, which had lead the affected students all over the castle to investigate on their own.

So far, all of the best clues had appeared within the Slytherin Common Room. The boys had recruited a surprising recruit, Avis Carrow, daughter of the Death Eater Alecto Carrow and (hopefully, though no proof existed otherwise) niece of Amycus, to help them. Her masculine aggression and suppressed rage had kept the rest of the house at bay as the boys tore into the private Slytherin bookshelves and discovered a gap in the House of Black tapestry. Corvus Black, as the apparent Heir to the House of Black, had managed to uncover that gap in the tapestry; the eldest child of Cygnus Black, born in 1840: a daughter, Australis Black. Cygnus had barely graduated Hogwarts before marrying and siring his first heir.

Yet when Chessie had asked Angelica to ask her husband, the word came back that there was no such person on the Black Family Tapestry. So who was this girl stuck in another dimension? At this point Angelica had also been sucked in from curiosity, and recruited her husband to research further.

And then Regulus had discovered the covered-up real eldest Black child of Cygnus and Ella Black in mid November- they had hid the evidence of their eldest after her disappearance, which coincided with Sirius Black 1's death in 1853 at eight years old. Chessie had relayed this back to the boys after making them promise to come to her when they needed assistance, despite the fact that this technically went against school rules.

Mid-November, Chessie found herself, along with Angelica and Regulus Black, technically only at the school to visit his wife and son, following the Cenopathy boys and Corvus's impassioned pleas that the curse on the missing Black girl could only be broken at the new moon of that specific month. They stood outside the library in a particular formation, Chessie in her black leather, the Blacks in traditional robes, and the boys in their school robes, just as supper began in the Great Hall. This ensured that the halls were empty as they approached the library doors reciting the incantation that their Ravenclaw friend Danielle Robinson had uncovered.

It hadn't taken much to persuade the Black daughter to come through the magical barrier with them, but the backlash made it seem almost suspicious in retrospect. Chessie stuck with her impression; the girl was, first of all, a metamorphmagus, but when they had lead her through the magical disruption between eras into their own, the crazy emerald green hair and eyes had turned into dark, thick hair and grey eyes that nearly matched how Chessie recalled the Blacks looking. Her tears certainly seemed genuine as Angelica Black assumed the role of consolation and counselor for the misplaced child.

McGonagall had drilled the students for over an hour before dismissing them all, sending Australis to the Hospital Wing, and summoning Chessie and Angelica to her office late at night. Regulus had snuck off in the time before then, after the women promised to keep his involvement a secret.

"I honestly am not even sure where to start," McGonagall said angrily, looking between the two professors in the visitors' seats in front of her desk. "I have heard what the boys have told me, but why would you possibly encourage this? Nothing about this situation called for student involvement."

Angelica slumped a little, unused to negative feedback. Chessie was unfazed, and decided to explain.

"Ma'am," she started calmly, "It seemed very apparent that the boys were going to do something with or without professor approval, and I felt- we both felt- that it would be far safer to have experienced professionals with them. You know how hard it is to dissuade students; at least this way, we could help ensure their safety."

"And in the event that they were right," Angelica added softly, "Which it turns out was true, the hidden child would probably be in need of help and the boys would need the magical backup to make sure that everybody came out safe."

McGonagall gave them both a very severe look for an uncomfortable amount of time, before sighing and sitting down at the desk.

"I had hoped that this sort of event was something that only happened to Albus," she said, rubbing her temples, "But apparently not. I am grateful that you helped the students avoid irreparable injury even though it went against school rules, but at the same time, now we have a 161-year-old 13-year-old to aid who is currently asleep in the Hospital Wing. At this point," she sighed in defeat, "I would recommend we all just go to bed and handle this tomorrow."

The professors agreed passively and left to their own quarters and reflection. Deep in the Slytherin dorm cellars, Absolom, Ambrose, and Corvus went to bed uneasily as well. In the Hospital Wing, a long-lost, currently dark-haired girl slept as well.


	15. Almost Falling

"Wait," Slughorn began, setting his teacup back in its saucer so he could use both hands to rub his temples. "This Black ancestor is going to pick up classes and continue the school year after winter break?"

"That's what McGonagall said," Chesse sipped her own tea. They were seated in Slughorn's expansive office, enjoying some imported Oolong that Slughorn had acquired in the calm after midterm exams and before the semester ended. "The girl got herself trapped just before Christmas, but by being trapped in a facsimile of the library, she has actually kept up with the curriculum over the years remarkably well. The Headmistress said that she may as well finish her education officially."

"Is this a stray you are taking in as well?" Horace asked, settling back in his wingback chair with a lemon scone. Chessie took one for herself off the china plate on the end table between them.

"I don't have room and she has family, technically," Chessie said. "Angelica Black and her husband are going to accept custody once they get a house in the spring. Not that a few others haven't volunteered, but those two seemed the safest for the child."

"An ancestor of the House of Black, in my House," Slughorn marvelled. "And a metamorphmagus at that."

"I feel like I should remind you not to try to suck up to students," Chessie frowned. "Let the poor girl get through puberty and school on her own. It's been a ridiculous amount of time since she was last in the world and the last thing she needs is to be assaulted with Slug Club entreaties on top of all the other stress she is going through."

Slughorn harrumphed but didn't respond, sipping his tea thoughtfully. Chessie sighed.

"So not to change the subject, but... I'm changing the subject. What do Heads of House do during the holidays?"

At four in the morning on December 15, Chessie woke up with a start in her bed at Hogwarts, gasping for breath. Something else was wrong. How did this school even function? She felt a sense of urgency as she flung the forest green sheets back and stumbled into her house slippers, throwing on a thick robe and heading towards the door. It wasn't an intruder, she could tell, but someone was not where they were supposed to be. Chessie's curly dark hair bounced all over as she hurried randomly up halls, trying to get a bearing on the dark feeling that had awoken her.

The farther up the stairs she went, the stronger the sense of wrongness became, until finally she was shivering in the frigid December air on the Astronomy Tower. Despite the darkness, she could see a silhouetted figure standing on the half wall, facing out into the darkness. Chessie lunged, and yanked the figure back before she had even finished processing the image in her mind.

It was Australis, the lost Black ancestor, who the twins and Corvus and their little group of friends had rescued less than two months before. She had been joking and smiling with her various visitors and new friends just that afternoon- yet she looked terrible now in a generic Infirmary gown and blotchy, tear stained cheeks.

"Sorry," she said without meeting Chessie's eyes and bursting into tears. Chessie didn't think, she pulled the teenage girl into a tight hug as they collapsed onto the roof several feet away from the edge.

"What the hell-," Chessie gasped, adrenaline rushing through her system. "No. Just cry."

"What?" Australis pulled back slightly and looked up, meeting Chessie's golden eyes with her own bloodshot grey ones.

"Don't- don't think," Chessie stuttered, "Just cry. Get it out." She pulled the girl back closer as the tears came louder and stronger than before for nearly a quarter of an hour.

"Professor-"

"Shut up," Chessie said, pulling the girl back into the tightest hug of all, there on the ground of the Astronomy Tower. "You are not done. You are alone and scared and hurt so much, and you need to just feel bad for a bit. It's okay. Feel bad."

There was no response, just a barrage of loud, racking sobs. Chessie's mind was racing. She was stuck thinking of how she had been too late to save Absolom and Ambrose's sister, whom she had called Hope back in the werewolf camp days. Apparently hope alone hadn't been enough for Hope, as her body had been discovered far too late. The flashbacks of that terrible time- breaking the news to the twins, only being able to return one of the two missing children to a lonely widow...

She turned her mind off as best she could, pulling her wand out to summon some of the wooden chairs leaning against the wall over to them. The images of being too late to stop a suicide were nearly blocking her ability to think, countered only by relief at the warm body crying and dripping snot all over her robes keeping her grounded.

It felt like years but was apparently only an hour before, finally, she got up and sat Australis and herself in the chairs and summoned a house elf to bring them hot cocoa. The twilight was beginning to fade as the first of the sun's rays came over the horizon.

"So I am assuming things aren't going well?" Chessie asked softly, watching as the sky slowly got lighter. Beside her, Australis shivered in her nightgown. Chessie scooted her chair closer and opened her robe to share, which the young girl accepted readily.

"Ha," Australis snorted, "I knew on some level that things would be very different, but it is one thing to know and entirely another to experience. Everybody I knew has been dead for decades."

"Don't I know it," Chessie agreed sympathetically. "Although I have never tried to jump off the tallest tower at school."

"I didn't want to risk surviving," Australis admitted. She took a breath as though to continue, then let it out slowly and lapsed into silence.

"So what now?" Chessie asked quietly.

"I don't know," Australis said sadly. "I didn't plan this far."

They sipped their cocoa in silence as the sun began to rise over the horizon. Chessie reflected while the two watched the rays of light gradually light up the castle and grounds, which were admittedly beautiful with the frost covering the grass and stone. They were the only ones outside, and as a teacher, Chessie held a deep appreciation for silence now that she hadn't before. In a few hours, students would be following the path to Hogsmeade, to the Hogwarts Express, to go home for the holidays. But at this moment, it was quiet.

"So, I am marrying into a ludicrously large, loving family," Chessie found herself saying, "In six months. And I am terrified."

Australis looked up from her spot against Chessie's side, grey eyes wide.

"I grew up alone," she continued. "My parents didn't want me to rely on anyone. Ever. But I found, while here at Hogwarts, how lonely and isolated that made me. There was a hole, that I created, that kept growing, until I couldn't feel anything anymore. I thought, at the time, that anything I couldn't accomplish myself wasn't worth undertaking. I ran away from home, I started my own life. I got a job. I bought a house. I moved on. I did all of this by myself. Me.

"But, after a few years, things happened that I couldn't control, and I was forced to rely on others. When I was bitten by a werewolf, I found myself in a position where I was compelled to accept help from others- strangers, even. And it hurt. It hurt so bad to acknowledge that my independence and intellect wasn't enough to get me by. I wanted to die, but I knew I had to keep on. In my case, because I had a child looking to me to help her as well. I was at the absolute worst I have ever been, but certain people saw me in that state, and took me in anyway. I'm marrying one of them soon. He is the best man I have ever met. I am excited to marry him.

"And it scares the hell out of me. I love him, I love the life we have together. But it still feels weird some days to come home to someone happy to see me, to have someone ask about my day and genuinely care about how I respond. But that is part of the process, I think. It has to hurt, so that later on you know how good you have it. You can't truly know happiness unless you have lost it, and then gotten it back. And I know you are not in a good place right now, but this is important too. I hope it fades. I hope you make friends- and I know of several students who would love to, if you'd let them- but I also hope that you never forget how terrible you feel right now.

"Because this moment, this night we have had, where you did not climb back up onto that wall after I tackled you, is going to be the best decision you ever make."


	16. Another Big Fat Weasley Christmas

Later that day, by the time Australis had been safely deposited back in the Hospital Wing under Madam Pomfrey's care, the students had been sent home, and Chessie had debriefed McGonagall and Slughorn- as Australis's Head of House-, and pulled aside Angelica and relayed the story as well, she was thoroughly exhausted.

Chessie went home, tiredy eating a sandwich while she shot through the Floo System to Diagon Alley, hardly choking on the last piece of crust or missing a step as she landed in the Leaky Cauldron fireplace.

She had ended up talking, ranting, and ultimately screaming through sobs at George as he fed her chocolate and butterbeer at their flat, in the quiet while Rose was still at her muggle school and the twins were on the train home. They had the apartment to themselves and Chessie needed to decompress. On the plus side, the whole breakdown lead to an amazing encounter in the bedroom, despite the things she had yelled through frustrated tears. It was barely after lunch, and they lay curled up together under the thick down comforter Molly Weasley had made for her prankster son when he and Fred had first bought the place.

George's arms were around Chessie as she fell asleep, and again later as she woke up to his soft snoring. She felt the warmth of his body and curled up tighter, basking in the feeling of being home.

"Hmm?" he sleepily murmured, stretching. Chessie rolled over to face her fiance.

Ten years ago, even five years ago, she would have completely disdained any idea that she would be involved with a former Gryffindor, let alone a Weasley, but here they were, four years in and engaged. Every time that she went home, she wanted to stay and never leave. There were issues still- Fred's death was still being processed, to an extent, and all of the foster children coming in and out kept things interesting.

"Hey, so," George said sleepily, "You were busy screaming earlier and that sounded important, but I had an idea and wanted to run it by you."

Chessie made a noise similar to a purr and burrowed in closer, loving the contact and body heat now that her rage was gone.

"I think we should adopt Rose," he said, "Once we are married. Officially. Like, Rose Carley Weasley."

Chessie gasped in surprise. She had been expecting something involving explosives, with him. "As a daughter?"

"Well no, as a son," George said levelly. Chessie punched his chest.

"She is never leaving us because I refuse to let that happen so why not?" George continued. "It would be amazing to do that at the same time as the wedding. Like, we already are a family, so why not make it official?"

Chessie almost started crying. How had she found this man? She knew the answer was really because she had slept in his doorframe while homeless and he had tripped over her, but that wasn't nearly as romantic. She thought back to that morning.

She thought of the look on Rose's face when she would find out. This wedding day was going to be amazing in so many ways now.

"We need to add some people to the guest list," she said quietly, relaxing in the warmth once again. "And Pomona and your mother really need to decide who is planning this wedding so we can demand more stuff."

George chuckled happily and pulled his future wife closer, and they went back to sleep for a little longer before they had to be adults again.

On Christmas Day, the five of them travelled to the Burrow for the annual Weasley Christmas Supper. Rose had been for the last few years, but this was the first time the twins had gone. This was Absolom's first Christmas outside of his childhood home, and he was trying to be brave. Ambrose had been to one once before, a few years beforehand, but had forgotten how crowded Weasley family events were. For once, Chessie was elated. She had invited Pomona Sprout and was looking forward to the throwdown between her and Molly over her wedding planning.

The portkey dropped them behind an old church in Ottery St. Catchpole, and Rose chatted the twins up as the group walked out of town to the Burrow. As they approached, the twins laughed.

"Is that the house? What is that?" Absolom blurted out in amusement. "What am I looking at?"

George laughed. "Welcome to the Burrow!" he said happily. "This is where I grew up, with my parents, five brothers, and sister. And sometimes more people!"

Ambrose smiled and picked up his pace, with Rose matching and dragging Absolom to the house by an arm. Chessie smiled at the sight. She had always hated going home, and hadn't seen her childhood home since she was a teenager. This was a wonderful sight, the lopsided house with its unkempt yard and wild chickens. As they approached, Molly Weasley came rushing out to greet them with large hugs. For once, Chessie returned her hug with equal strength, which flustered Molly. It had been a very soul-baring year.

The supper was even more packed than the previous year, with the long haphazard row of mismatched tables and chairs not enough for all of the guests. Fleur came to give polite cheek-kissing greetings to her brother-in-law and future sister-in-law, and she could see Bill supervising their daughter Victoire and Teddy Lupin's playing in the corner of the living room.

It was loud, and crowded, and people were constantly bumping into each other even in the magically-heated garden, and everybody had a wonderful time. At one point, Chessie found herself talking to Andromeda Tonks in the kitchen.

"So, I know there are no grounds for this, but I have a favor to ask of you," she asked cautiously. Andromeda, with her wizened expression and immensely sad eyes, tilted her head in curiosity. "If you didn't know yet from the Daily Prophet, there is a girl at Hogwarts who is your ancestor sort of."

"I read about that," Andromeda said softly, "My great-great-aunt, technically. How is the poor thing doing?"

"Not well," Chessie admitted, "She has lost everybody and I had to stop her from...making an irreversible decision... earlier this month. Would it be crazy for me to ask if you could write her a letter?"

Andromeda's expression fell, but she looked thoughtful. "What could I possibly write?"

Chessie thought quickly. "Tell her about your family. Tell her about Tonks, and Remus, and Teddy. She is already hurting and I know you are too, but maybe you could help her get through this. Maybe it would help you too."

There was a long, awkward silence.

"But if you don't want to, or can't yet-."

"Send me an address," Andromeda's gaze met Chessie's, and she suddenly understood how so many from that family had left to forge their own despite their family's resistance. There was a secret strength that they kept hidden in reserve. Chessie agreed to owl her with details, and they parted and rejoined the party. Chessie was barely in time to keep George from a one-man reenactment of his departure in their seventh year and Umbridge Retaliation Fireworks Display, to many peoples' disappointment. It was hard to chastize him through the laughter, but she managed. Barely.


	17. The Calm, Before

Despite her best efforts, Chessie found herself unable to avoid attending the first Quidditch match after the holidays. It was late February, and despite the terrible sleet and freezing temperatures, Chessie was pouting furiously, bundled up to her eyes in cold- and rain-repelling clothing, sandwiched between McGonagall and Angelica Black. As a professor who hadn't attended Hogwarts, Angelica was trying to root equally for both Ravenclaw and Slytherin houses. While the tanned yet elegant wife of the Heir of the House of Black was clad stylishly in a tartar peacoat and thick woolen cap, Chessie had settled for throwing on as many random layers as she could and somewhat resembled an angry marshmallow with crazy, brown-black tight curls spilling out the top. Her dark complexion stood out starkly against the barrage of colors she wore. Her scowl was even bolder.

"Okay, I gotta say something," Angelica said, smiling at Chessie. Chessie scowled back. "You look miserable."

"I don't care about sports. It's wet. It's cold. I want to go home. I would rather grade essays than this, and I hate reading about peoples' opinions."

"No school spirit whatsoever? You were in Slytherin, right? Your former house is playing," Angelica goaded, her dark brown eyes bright with amusement. "My husband was in Slytherin as well, would you look less miserable if I cheered for them?"

"It won't make a difference, I don't care about the entire sport. It seems pointless to me for anything other than House points for the House Cup, and there has been no point in my life where that was important to me."

"Spoilsport," Angelica nudged her, almost knocking her over. Chessie shoved back out of reflex more than anything. They smirked at each other and Angelica continued to try to explain the game while Chessie booed everybody equally.

Professor Flitwick looked entirely at home in the den when Chessie showed up at her shared apartment with George that spring. She had drawn the short straw- literally, that was how they decided things sometimes in staff meetings- and had rode the Hogwarts Express back to London for Easter Break as a staff chaperone. It was a six hour train ride, and Chessie had spent the bulk of it patrolling the aisles and occasionally breaking up arguments as well as snoggings. Once she had arrived, it had been straight to Rose's muggle school to see the school's spring play, where Rose was the narrator. The twins had come out of curiosity at seeing a muggle school, gawking at the crude childrens' drawings in the halls and cinderblock walls just as much as at the muggle special effects in the play.

They had walked together as a group through the Leaky Cauldron and into Diagon Alley afterwards, discussing the play. Rose was ridiculously proud of her role in the play, and Absolom and Ambrose were stoking her confidence by asking endless questions about the play, the rehearsals, the plot, and anything else they could think of to make their foster sister feel less left out of their magical family. Chessie listened in contentment, and found herself smiling uncontrollably as they let themselves into the door that led to the first floor flat they lived in above the joke shop.

Seeing Filius having tea with George was not what she had been expecting at all. He had stayed home from the play with a headache, but now Chessie wasn't so sure he hadn't deceived her.

"Er, hello?" she said, acknowledging her coworker and her fiance. "Lads, Rose, go get ready for bed."

The boys and Rose scurried off (Rose giving a curious yet wistful look at the small professor in the living room before obeying), leaving Chessie facing George and Flitwick.

"So you were sick, huh?" Chessie's first target was George. He winced.

"In my defense, I do have a bit of congestion," he said cautiously, "But to be honest, we were discussing the wedding plans."

Chessie didn't wince, because she was very conscious that was a bad thing to do reflexively at the mention of ones' own wedding. "What about them?" she asked carefully, sitting slowly on the arm of the sofa.

"Well," Filius began, setting his cup of Earl Grey back on its saucer, "the ceremony is scheduled for the middle of June, which is only two months away. Pomona, Molly and I have gotten everything set up for the ceremony and reception at the school, but George had an addition that frankly, we are definitely going to work in."

Chessie's reluctant expression lifted. "Oh?" she paused and listened hard towards the rest of the home before continuing. "About the... thing we discussed?"

George nodded happily, "Yes. The solicitor said he would get the paperwork together for us."

Chessie couldn't stop the grin that spread across her face, and she got up and crossed the room to give her future husband a hard side-hug.

"Not to undermine your ego, but that is the part I am second-most-excited about," she said happily. Flitwick watched amusedly, sipping his tea in the fourth-hand recliner George had shoved in the corner of the room years ago.

"Molly is absolutely terrifying and it took a lot to convince her that the Burrow wouldn't have the resources Hogwarts does for the ceremony, but we negotiated a peace treaty and now everything is in order. All we need now is for the day to arrive!" Flitwick beamed with excitement at the two of them. Chessie couldn't help but roll her eyes and smile in response, gently fingering her engagement ring behind her back as she did so. She was excited too.

June had gone by in a flash. Chessie had thought that all she had left to stress about for the school year was the last group of final exams. The fact that once again she had awoken abruptly in the dark of the night purely out of instinct was already negating that.

She paused, seated upright in her four-poster Hogwarts bed. The last time this had happened, she had ended up preventing a suicide. Australis was doing much better, and Chessie knew somehow it wasn't that again. But something seemed...if not wrong, then off. Out of place. She groaned and got out of bed, shoving her feet into house-slippers and grabbing her robe irritably. She never could get back to sleep when this mood hit until she had done a patrol of the school. It had been happening more often lately. She had attributed it to the headlines in the Prophet: "Greyback Spotted on England Border", "Murderous Werewolf Seen in Glasgow", and similar; there was no doubt about the path that the escaped Fenrir Greyback had been carving across Great Britain, and it was right in her direction.

Every time she had brought this up with McGonagall, she had dismissed Chessie's concerns, going so far the most recent time as to tour Chessie on several of the school's update security measures. They were very good. It hadn't worked; Chessie was still on edge.

The last time she had seen Greyback was in London. He had broken into the flat in Diagon Alley, stolen Rose, and held her hostage to stop Chessie from fracturing his wolf pack. He had failed, because Chessie had offered her followers more than he had- but times had changed, and most of them had died in the final battle of the war. Chessie was very, incredibly aware that only a small handful of werewolves were left in Great Britain, and most of them were mad at her, especially Greyback.

She had fought him directly twice, and lost terribly both times, only surviving due to outside forces. But if he was on his way to the school, was it for her, or for his former protege, Ambrose? She recalled the way he had dragged the boy around, forcing him to observe and help with Greyback's plots. It had taken far too much therapy to re-center Ambrose, and Chessie had no intentions of letting the boy go through that sort of torturous existence again. He would bear the physical scars for the rest of his life, but she would be damned if the emotional scars stayed that strong.

Silently she crept through the halls, listening, watching, searching for the source of her uneasiness. The full moon had been the prior week, and it was a weird enough time for a potential attack that she let her guard down and was just turning to head back to bed when the screaming began.


	18. The Attack

At once, the school came alive as ghosts appeared, teachers burst out of their rooms, and students began fleeing up and down the halls. Chessie went from being alone on a subfloor, to being surrounded and pushed back and forth against the wave of Slytherin students fleeing the dungeons and the screaming in their pajamas. What was going on down there?

She pulled out her wand and began shoving her way through the oncoming crowd of panicked teenagers futilely, only succeeding when she started casting spells to clear a path. She bolted down staircases until she was in the corridor that lead to the Slytherin Common Room, and froze in the center of the hall.

At the other end, Fenrir Greyback, a huge, muscular, hulking mess of a being grinned a bloody smile at Chessie from atop the pile of splintered mahogany that had formerly been the doors to the dorm. There was an unconscious form suspended under his left arm, and by the lighting on the silvery hair, she could tell it was Ambrose. Her Ambrose, unconscious and hanging from the giant werewolf's arm like a blanket. She could nearly sense her inner wolf roaring to the surface with fury at the attack on her family.

"Oh, it's you," the giant wolf rasped as blood casually ran down his face, "You would be so much fun to kill. But revenge isn't the goal today. Survival is."

"Why won't you die," Chessie growled, flinging her robe aside and running down the hall in her nightgown, fueled by adrenaline alone. Her enemy had broken into a school common room and attacked her students. This could not stand.

Without hesitating, Greyback laughed and threw his free arm out. Despite suddenly shifting to dodge the attack, Chessie found his giant hairy hand squeezing around her throat, and as her vision started to grow spotty, she could only focus on the thirteen year old boy unconscious in his other arm, not moving...

And then she was flying through the air, and felt an intense impact against a wall, and the world went red, then black.

She groaned and lay there, being in terrible pain.

"Chessie?" A voice questioned. She felt that she should have known where she had heard it before, but refused to move or open her eyes.

"Chessie, wake up," it said again. So bossy, she thought disapprovingly, frowning against both that and her migraine. She wiggled her toes. 'So I still have legs, that's good', she thought. She did the same with her fingers. Finally, Chessie slowly blinked her eyes open and her vision was consumed with red and white. No, it was a person, she realized as her vision cleared. It was George.

"Don't tell me what to do," she muttered, slowly flexing her muscles to make sure everything worked. She thought back to how this could have happened. There was a feeling, and walking halls, and then screams and then-.

"AMBROSE," Chessie sat bolt upright in bed and yelled. "Where is Ambrose?"

She grabbed George's shirt by the collar and looked him dead in the eyes. "Where is Ambrose?"

Madame Pomfrey came into sight with a goblet, accompanied by Headmistress McGonagall.

"Drink this," she said firmly, holding out the goblet to Chessie.

"What? No! Absolutely not! Where is Ambrose? What happened?" Chessie yelled, flailing at the cotton sheets on the infirmary cot so she could get up. George shifted to block her escape.

"You need to go back to sleep and heal," Madame Pomfrey said, casually laying Chessie back on the bed via a pressure point in her arm. "There is nothing further you can do for him."

Chessie nearly started arguing again, but the minty liquid was forced down her throat and she had to cough to avoid choking.

"Where is Ambrose?" she slurred as the potion took effect. As the world grew black again, she felt a hand on her forehead.

"We don't know," George said sadly, stroking her forehead.

It had been four days since the breach of security, and Chessie hadn't spoken. The final group of students had finished their exams and she had gone through the motions of proctoring without ever once realizing what she was doing or paying attention at all. She was consumed with dread. He was dead. She had lost another. No one was left who remembered the werewolf camp, and the pain within. She was alone.

She was alone. The lone werewolf at Hogwarts.

There was an entire staff meeting that Chessie had opted to ignore and instead of answering the insistent knocking on her door, she drew a pillow tight over her head and tried not to feel. The date of the wedding was a week out before George sent out the notice that it was canceled for the time being. Chessie didn't argue it, and George continued to lurk as the school emptied for the summer, focusing on keeping Rose and Ambrose distracted as best he could from the flat above Weasley's Wizard Wheezes.. If he was having flashbacks or anxiety attacks of his own, he had been doing a good job of keeping them hidden for the time being because Chessie hadn't heard about it. Not that she was fully paying attention, though.

Chessie sat on the sofa in her dark nightgown in the middle of the night at the end of June, staring blankly at the Daily Prophet on the end table in the lamplight filtering in from the windows, only moving when the door knocker suddenly rang out. She jumped a foot in the air and almost peed, but made it to her feet and went towards the door.

It was Headmistress McGonagall. "They found him," she said without exposition, taking in Chessie's expression and wardrobe with a note of concern. "Ambrose is at St. Mungo's now."

"Hold on a moment," Chessie gasped, bolting down the hall to her room, punching George in the arm really hard while giving him the news, throwing on proper pants and then running back into the foyer.

"Okay I am ready, let's go," she rasped while shoving a jacket on over her pajama top. Once again she failed to match at all- stripes and polka dots this time. But her foster son had been missing for almost a week and it hurt far too much to worry about clothes. Minerva sighed resolutely as George staggered into the hall pulling his socks on with shoes tucked under his arm, and waited as they finished readying themselves.

The hospital was full but not frantic, which Chessie found incredibly insulting. They should be as worried as she was, she thought. They were led up several hallways to the Dai Lewellyn Ward for magica bites, and Chessie froze.

In the furthest bed, a young boy with greying hair was covered, head to toe, in bandages and monitoring systems. He resembled a corpse more than a person, between all of the bandages, splints, and breathing mask monitoring his vitals.

"Wat," she whispered softly. The nurse misheard.

"Oh, are you here for Mr. Cenopathy? That is unfortunate but I can't allow you to get any closer. The head healer on this ward has asked for privacy, as the boy's condition is quite severe. Chessie had every intention of throat-punching the Healer, and it must have showed because McGonagall and George each took one arm and physically dragged her back into the visitor's area on that floor.

"I understand that you are under a great deal of stress and this is extremely painful for you, Chessie," McGonagall spoke quietly but sternly as they sat down, "but there is still a level of decorum that you need to follow. Let these trained professionals do their jobs. When it is safe for Mr. Cenopathy to be seen, they will let us in. Not before."

Chessie sighed, which turned into a small sob. She bent forward and put her face in her hands, trying to get the brief image of her broken foster son out of her brain. "I know logically that this isn't my fault, but it really feels like it is and I can't convince myself otherwise."

"It isn't," George finally said, leaning over the armrest to hug her. "You did nothing wrong."

"Our wedding was supposed to be tomorrow. Today." She couldn't stop a few tears slipping out into her hands before regaining control.

"It's still going to happen," George reassured her, rubbing her back. "Just not for now. Everybody knows what happened, they all understand."

"He looked- looks- so broken," she whispered. George didn't have a response for that one. He opened his mouth to speak and changed his mind several times before finally glancing across Chessie's back to McGonagall helplessly. She took over.

"As I said before, just let the Healers work. Whatever the situation is, it would be entirely worse if he wasn't here in their care. Now that they know you are here, updates should start to happen soon."

They sat for an hour before George remembered the other two children they had left home alone, and went to make sure they were set up for the day when they awoke later in the morning. McGonagall stayed with Chessie.


	19. Summer in St Mungo's

"Are you the parent?" a healer finally came out into the waiting area two hours later. McGonagall had left, promising to return after breakfast. Chessie flinched, but nodded.

"Yes," she said flatly, "Chessie Wharton. I've got legal custody. How is Ambrose?"

The Healer shook her hand- the first time a Healer had ever done so with without flinching at shaking a werewolf's hand, she privately noted- and ushered her into an office down the hall.

"Please, have a seat," the Healer gestured towards the mismatched chairs facing her desk as she sat down behind it. Chessie glanced around with trepidation at the rickety shelves of books, texts, and other scholarly journals that filled it from floor to ceiling, but complied.

"Thanks," she said demurely, immediately starting to fidget from nerves. The Healer paused to adjust her glasses and glance at the top page of an open file in front of her, before meeting Chessie's eyes again.

"I am Healer Fidelity Hamilton. I've been the Head of the Dai Lewellyn Ward for the last few years, since the spring of 1998. And in that time, plus fifteen years of experience on this and several other levels here at St. Mungo's, I have never seen a more severe case of injury than this in which the patient has survived this long."

Chessie blinked, confused but attentive.

"Five hours ago, when the Aurors brought Mr. Cenopathy in, I thought he would be dead within moments. He came in with so many broken bones, burst arteries, swelling, ruptures, so much more, not to mention the severe physical scarring over what we are estimating will be around sixty percent of his body. I estimated his odds of survival as nearly impossibly high. Nevertheless, we are experts and set to work, and so far he is responding to treatment fairly well. Surprisingly so. It is deeply encouraging, and we are going to continue to work hard.

"I have been informed that he is already a werewolf, so I am assuming I can skip that counseling session," she said dryly. Chessie smirked a little, nodding, still unable to speak, "As are you. So. My biggest worry at this point isn't Mr. Cenopathy's response to treatment here, it is how much damage will reoccur during the full moon that is, I believe, five days away."

"June 6," Chessie confirmed briefly.

"And so I know you won't like to hear this, but I want to keep all visitors out of the ward until further notice so we can maximize our ability to provide reactive care for his current injuries, as well as prepare for the approaching ones. If we can heal all of the critical and moderate damage internally, skipping the surface injuries, and come up with some sort of sedation or supervision during the night of the full moon, ideally the risks of further injury or even death will drop dramatically. The scars will be worse, but he will be alive to deal with that, at least."

"I've already started on the Wolfsbane Potion," Chessie said slowly, "I could supervise. I'm not sure what experience you have with it but firsthand, but I know that I still function mentally as I do outside the full moon. We could rig up some sort of room, and maybe an alert if he starts to die- if something- goes wrong with him."

The Healer considered. "I have learned over time to keep an open mind. But simply put, Miss Wharton, I don't trust you yet. Nothing personal, but my primary goal is not to appease you but to support my patients above all else."

"I'll be here pretty much the entire week, visitations or not," Chessie said firmly. "We're not blood, we're just barely family, but-" she pointed off in the direction she could tell Ambrose was, "-that is my son. You and I are going to see a lot of each other this week. Just let me know what you decide. I trust your judgment in this matter no matter how much I also hate it."

The Healer finally smiled, which somehow made her look even more tired, but in a more pleasant way. They both had a long summer ahead of them.

"I will."

Just as Chessie was being escorted back to the waiting area, the lift opened and two aurors emerged. One was middle-aged in appearance with a battle-hardened face. The other was somewhat younger. They looked around, spotted her, and started walking in that direction.

"Bill," Chessie said gently at the elder auror as they approached, "Oh wait, you're on duty, aren't you? Sorry, Warden Savage. How can I help you?"

Savage strode purposefully the final few week with a stern, wizened face and his buzzed white haircut, Auror robes billowing, before suddenly engulfing Chessie in such a strong hug that she felt like she had been hit by a suddenly affectionate wall.

"I'm technically on duty, yes," he said in a low, firm, voice, "There have been developments in the Cenopathy case and we need to talk with you. I am sure you will have questions for us also. My first one is, how are you holding up? Have you eaten?"

Chessie suddenly hugged back. Bill Savage was the closest person to a father she had. They had first met while Chessie had been spying on Greyback during the war. She had saved his daughter's life, helped coach her through several werewolf transformations after Greyback had bitten her. Seen her die from beside her father's side at the final battle. They had both been pall-bearers. Afterward, they had stayed in touch. Neither of them had any other blood-related family left.

Chessie considered his question and realized that yes, she was incredibly hungry. "I am," she tried not to sound surprised at being hungry after nearly a full day without food. Bill snorted, not fooled.

"This looks like real food, but it's from our cantina at the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, so I can assure you that it is not. You'll stop being hungry though." he handed her what appeared to be a deli sandwich in a clear bag. "Magic or not, these should spoil after certain amounts of time. The fact that they don't seem to is deeply troubling to me. Eat this and let's talk."

They sat in the far corner of the nearly empty waiting room as Chessie devoured the mostly-normal sandwich. It was not tasty, but did stop the hunger pangs as advertised.

"I'm better now, food-wise. What do you need to know? I haven't heard anything after the first interrogation with your Aurors, the night Ambrose was taken. How did you find him? What happened to him?"

"Let's start with that," Savage decided, holding out his hand for a file that the younger Auror silently passed him. "We found him in the northern part of England. There were signs that Greyback and three other escaped werewolf convicts had been there for several days, and had intended to settle in. We found accessories that indicated periods of prolonged torture-" Chessie flinched, and Savage frowned sympathetically, "- and also signs of several struggles. As we were investigating the campsite and scouring the area, Gardner here found a trail of blood and assorted debris leading towards a ravine, which is where we found Cenopathy unconscious and heavily injured at the edge of a cliff, and Greyback dead at the bottom of it."

"He is definitely dead?" Chessie aggresively asked. "Not faking it?"

"Confirmed," Savage nodded. "About as dead as it is possible to be after being shoved off an eighty-foot cliff onto sharp rocks."

Chessie blinked, "Wait, so does this mean Ambrose killed him? Does that count as murder?" she started to panic internally. The younger Auror, Gardner, spoke up finally.

"It's a grey area in many cases," he said, "But all of the signs point to self defense, and that is what we wrote in the reports."

"Don't worry, he isn't in legal trouble," Savage continued. "But we will have to interrogate him once he is conscious again. When will that be?"

Chessie groaned and sat back. "Not for at least a week or two. Likely more. Full moon in five days, and they are worried that's going to undo a lot of the progress this week. Oh, wait- what about those other werewolves? Is that still a problem?"

"Negative, two of them were caught about an hour ago and the other turned himself in not long after we brought Cenopathy here. The threat is neutralized now."

"Oh, good. Because someone hurt one of my own and I am definitely in the mood for revenge." Chessie stated bluntly, scowling into the distance. "Good thing you already took care of it."

Savage nodded thoughtfully. "Would you let us know, then, when the Healers let visitors in?"

She agreed to. They all parted, and Chessie moved two benches together and laid down to try to nap for a bit until there was another update on Ambrose.


	20. A New Witch in the Family

As it turned out, the Healers absolutely knew what was best for Ambrose, because within three weeks, even with a full moon, he was allowed to wake up from his magic-induced coma and sometimes sit up. There was still a lot of progress to go, but now that the critical parts were over, the game was patience more than anything else. Magic or not, it takes time to heal from the quantity and severity of injuries he had received.

Chessie had finally been allowed to see him the third week after his admittance. It was one of the hardest things she had ever done to pretend to be casual and cheerful while surveying all of the new scars on the thirteen year old. The original attack that had turned him into a werewolf at eight years old had left some grey hair and a web of scarring down the right side of his ear and neck, and the rough years in the wilderness had added some more. But now...it had seemed that Greyback's repertoire of permanently-scarring attack moves had reached their pinnacle.

There were four bold claw marks across Ambrose's face, a few crossing those that went down his right cheek. His chest, back, arms and legs also looked like someone had inflicted as much skin damage as possible, and the overall result was, as the Healers had predicted, major permanent scarring that no magic would be able to hide. One day in mid-July, Chessie had gotten permission from Healer Hamilton to cut Ambrose's overly shaggy hair, and discovered that the new hair growth of the last month had turned a dark silvery grey. There was no more of the black that his twin brother had anymore. Fully grey-haired, barely a teenager. They didn't even look like twins anymore, let alone identical ones.

The first visitation with Absolom was rough. It was the very morning the Healers had allowed guests, and Chessie had woken Absolom up at the crack of dawn to visit his brother. He had brushed his dark, wavy hair back and worn a surprisingly nice shirt and pants, and appeared to exhude a confident air that utterly fell apart when he was seated in a chair by his brother's hospital bed. In the end, Absolom had refused to leave and fell asleep in the chair that evening, and the Healers decided to just leave them. It was the first time that they had seen Ambrose smile and figured the support may help him recover emotionally.

George was seated in Healer Hamilton's other mismatched guest chair at the beginning of August. By then, Ambrose was somewhat mobile, if still stiff and in some pain when he moved, and talk had begun of sending him home.

"I am happy to report that we are considering releasing Mr. Cenopathy for home care for the remainder of his summer break in about a week's time. He should be fully cleared to return to Hogwarts on time this fall."

Chessie squeezed George's hand excitedly, a broad smile crossing her face. Beside her, George grinned too.

"At this point, we have done everything we can medically and what Mr. Cenopathy needs most at this time is simply to rest and heal, and most people do that far more efficiently in their own homes. I want to see this full moon through and then make the final decision afterwards."

"But this month he has been able to take the Wolfsbane Potion, so it should go fine," Chessie stated. The Head Healer nodded.

"Exactly. We simply want an extra day or two to ensure that there won't be any future issues from this. And then he can go home."

When the day Ambrose was released from St. Mungo's came, Chessie almost had to fight Mollie Weasley off with an old Cleansweep broom. Their compromise was to let her clean and prepare their flat to her exacting standards, leaving Absolom and Rose at her mercy as assistants.

At suppertime just at the end of the first week of August, Ambrose leaned unsteadily against George and Chessie as they gently led him up the stairs to the second floor flat. The door opened before they had made it halfway up the stairs, and Absolom nearly jumped down the stairs to embrace his brother. They stood halfway up the stairs, simply hugging, for almost a full minute.

"Don't leave me again," she heard him whisper in his brother's ear.

George and Absolom took over, depositing Ambrose in his own bed. They all lingered for a moment, Absolom giving Rose a meaningful look just as it began to get awkward.

"Why are we not letting him sleep?" Chessie openly asked the room as Rose squeaked and bolted for her own room.

"Just a moment," Absolom said, starting to grin. George winked at Absolom as Rose came barreling back into the boys' room.

"Okay, so, in June when you guys were mostly at the hospital, I got a letter in the mail," she said elatedly, shoving her glasses back up her small nose. Rose cleared her throat and held up a formal-looking letter on parchment paper.

"Dear Ms. Carley," she began, voice trembling with excitement, "We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry..."

Molly Weasley, Ambrose, and Chessie started yelling in excitement at the same time as Rose continued to read. George and Absolom burst out laughing at the three of them. Alarmingly quickly, Chessie found her yelling turning into loud sobs as she roughly pulled Rose into a big hug.

"I'm so proud of you," she sobbed, getting Rose's pink sundress wet. "You will love it there."

For the first time, she genuinely meant it.

George cleared his throat. "So...suppertime?"

Ambrose kept grinning and laid back in bed, suppressing a yawn. "Go away all of you, I am looking forward to sleeping without people watching me for once."

"I thought you liked being the center of attention," Absolom joked, but pulled up his brother's sheets gently to tuck him in.

"Keeps your ego in check," the scarred werewolf murmered as he dozed off. "You're the pretty one now but I'm still the smart one."

They filtered out, Chessie quietly crying with joy with an arm around Rose, and had a quiet supper while discussing Hogwarts in the kitchen. Chessie looked at the faces around her table- her fiance, already telling Rose about some of the secret passages, her foster daughter, healthy and happy and thrilled to truly be involved in the family now, her soon-to-be mother-in-law, still cooing over all the children and fretting that Ambrose needed an extra blanket maybe, and Absolom, whose dark hair and olive-toned tan stood out almost as much as Chessie's even darker complexion, but also whose smile, just now returning, was just as bright as everybody else's at the table. Ambrose, asleep and healing and silver-headed in the other room, who hadn't lost his sense of humor. This was her family. This was home.

Of course, Rose may have received her Hogwarts letter two months prior, but with only a week left of summer, Chessie discovered that she had absolutely none of the required materials or uniforms.

"Seriously, George?" she had asked angrily, "You watched the kids while I was with Ambrose and she is completely unprepared for school!"

He had merely shrugged, "It seemed like you needed this more. Here," he had shoved a small purse full of coin into his angry fiance's hands, "I think it would mean more if you guys did this."

Chessie considered. Technically Rose wasn't actually George's responsibility yet, in a legal sense. He had gladly assumed the role anyway, but was still right- Rose was basically her daughter and deep down, Chessie had been looking forward to this.

To abate some of the hubbub once they got to King's Cross in a week, Ambrose had agreed to come out as well and be seen in Diagon Alley. Absolom wasn't far behind. The young werewolf needed to readjust to the gawking again and noise after the professional, courteous healing team at St. Mungo's. There would be tons of current and future peers in the shops and streets.

Of course there was an uproar whenever a friend of the twins spotted them, and what should have been two or so hours of buying books, uniforms, and clothing turned into an all-day extravaganza. The twins ended up having to peel off with some of the cash to go buy their own textbooks for their fourth year classes so that Chessie and Rose could actually get anything done.

The final stop was Ollivander's. The wand shop and its mysterious owner had always intrigued and low-key scared Chessie, especially when she was a child herself, being handed random wands before finally finding the perfect one- the wand currently stuck in her messy, curly bun of hair. They entered the shop, and the street noise abruptly stopped as the door closed behind them. Rose, with her blonde hair held back with a sparkly ribbon and purple dress suddenly not fluttering in the breeze anymore, looked around nervously. Her pale hands grabbed at Chessie's tighter, but she didn't say anything.

Ollivander appeared out of the shadows, looking at Rose. "You are here to meet your wand," he said in almost a whisper. Rose's blue eyes grew wide behind her glasses.

"Er- yes, sir," she said politely. "If I may."

The pale gaze shifted to Chessie, and she swore she saw a lopsided smirk for a brief moment.

"You were nearly a draw between two wands, one just barely preferring you more. The wand that ceded you was blackthorn wood, the one that chose you, cypress wood. Both wand woods historically choose warriors, those of strong personal strength. Cypress wood, though, is the more rare of the two- the handler of a cypress wand is unafraid to look into shadows, even those they cast on their own. And phoenix feather core, quite auspicious as well- very picky, very independent, and very difficult to win the loyalty of. May I?"

Ollivander gestured, and Chessie pulled her wand out of her hair and passed it over for inspection. After several moments, Ollivander returned it.

"The wand indeed chose well," he said. Chessie wasn't entirely sure if that was a compliment, but decided to take it as such. The pale eyes turned again towards Rose, silently studying her as she watched him back. She tried a small smile before giving up and solemnly watching the wandmaster look at her.

"Let us begin, perhaps, with unicorn hair cored wands." He walked towards the shelves.

It took twelve rejected wands for Rose to finally elicit the shower of sparks from one.

Ollivander looked excited. "I was correct about unicorn hair core, but this particular wand is interesting. Perhaps it should have been more apparent, but despite your unprepossessing posture and appearance, there is quite a range of traits within you that fit a wide variety of woods' preferences. This wand is apple wood. Apple wood prefers individuals of great personal charm and amicability, who can and often do talk to anybody. They are well-loved, generally, and although are not the most magically powerful individuals, nor have the most powerful wands, there is still quite a power in being able to unite others."

He looked between the two of them. "What a delightful combination," he said, shaking his head happily as Chessie paid for Rose's wand.


	21. Rose and Regulus

Chessie strongly disagreed with the large clock central to King's Cross Station. They were not running that late, all considered. There was still five minutes left to board the Hogwarts Express. George, pushing a trolley heavily laden with trunks, with Rose sitting on top and flanked by the twin Cenopathy boys, raced towards, and then through, the wall at Platform 9 ¾. Chessie followed close behind, covering for their blatant lack of discretion by throwing a smoke bomb from Weasley's Wizard Wheezes.

She didn't get to use the pranks and charms that George sold very often. She finally started to understand the appeal. Somehow, Chessie had drawn the short straw a second time in the staff meeting and was to ride the train with the students as a faculty supervisor on its seven-hour trip to Hogwarts for the beginning of the school year.

They kept running straight to the train itself, yelling at other students' families to get out of the way without pausing themselves, and stopped at the steps to one of the train cars with enough momentum to send Rose and the three students' trunks onto the stairwell. With encouragement, each child grabbed a trunk and dragged them onto the train as the final warning whistles emanated from the engine.

Chessie gathered her floor-length black skirt and moved to jump into the train car as well, but George, in his standard work business suit of brown with purple pinstripes, pulled her back by the hand and into a long, slow, dramatic kiss. The train whistled again and started to chug as he pulled her back upright, smiling mischievously. She snorted with amusement and a fond smile, gently slapped his cheek, and stepped up onto the train car step as the train shuddered to life and began to move.

"Try to stay out of trouble," she shouted over the steam release and engine chugging.

"You too," George shouted back, bowing and backing up with the now-empty trolley as the train began to move. She was going to miss him, but knew they would see each other a lot this fall. Their wedding was in the process of being rescheduled for the Christmas holiday. Chessie was still smiling as she turned to help Rose and the boys shove their trunks into a cabin within the car.

They sat together in an otherwise unoccupied car, chatting about the schoolyear, until the compartment door slid open and a confident young voice yelled happily at the twins.

"Absolom! Ambrose! Here you are!" It was Corvus, the twin's best friend, already clad in his Slytherin robes. He was flanked by a thin, pale girl with electric green hair in Gryffindor scarlet and gold- Australis Black, technically his great-great aunt, but they referred to each other as cousins for simplicity- as well as a younger, darker, curlier-haired version of Corvus in neutral First Year robes. His colors would come that evening.

The twins started talking at once, dragging their friends into the cabin.

"You guys! This is important! I want you all to finally actually meet my little brother, Ara! He'll be starting his first year with us this year." Corvus gestured at the smallest member of his posse, who looked small and vaguely worried.

Absolom pulled Rose, in her purple lace dress, to his side, "And this is our sister Rose, she's starting this year too." Ambrose nodded in agreement. The two eleven year olds said hello to each other awkwardly, flanked by their older siblings and sibling substitutes.

"Also, it seems that you are not dead so that's great too," Corvus added as an afterthought towards Ambrose. They all laughed and Chessie saw a moment.

"It sounds like you have a lot of catching up to do, so I am going to go patrol," she said tactfully, squeezing through the door. "You're all welcome to this cabin. The trolley should be by in a bit if you want snacks. Find me if you need anything."

"Er, Chessie?" Rose whispered, eyeing the doorway where her adoptive mother stood. Chessie pretended not to notice.

"Keep an eye on Rose, guys." She looked at the twins, her gold eyes meeting their dark blue ones, "Until she's Sorted, she's your responsibility," and with that Chessie slipped down the train car and across to the next one, and she spent a fun afternoon scaring new students and current students alike.

The first years followed Professor Flitwick to the front of the Great Hall, lined up alphabetically. Chessie, in her seat at the Head Table, tried to watch like a hawk while appearing to be unperturbed, not at all convinced that she was fooling anybody. Rose was just behind Ara Black, as it turned out, and the two whispered to each other based on only hours of familiarity. That was more that most students had, though.

"Abner, Andrew," Flitwick began reading the names as each first year came to the stool and the Sorting Hat. It felt like mere moments before Ara was called up.

"Black, Ara." As with his brother before him, whispers went up at the surname. However unlike Corvus, Ara sat, small and erect and calm, for the minute or so until the hat shouted "Ravenclaw!" and he scurried off to sit with the blue and bronze. And then-.

"Carley, Rose."

Rose hurried to the stool and sat, crossing her ankles, looking small and pale in the black Hogwarts robes. She seemed so uncomfortable until the Hat was lowered-.

"Hufflepuff!" the instant it touched her head, the House was shouted. Chessie smirked as Rose hurried off to the Hufflepuff table, being embraced by some of the friends and connections of Absolom and Ambrose. Chessie chuckled quietly. They had all predicted Hufflepuff for Rose, and it played out just that way. She had just won 20 quid from Bill Savage off of Rose's Sorting.

McGonagall gave her Headmistress' Speech, which was brief, and then supper commenced. Chessie ate like a monster, what with the full moon the next evening, but something caught her eye as she tore chicken off the thigh like a beast. Who was sitting on the other side of Angelica, two seats down from her? He was pale but dark-haired, and his thick was pulled back into a modest clubbed style, restrained by a modest black ribbon. His features were handsome but worn a bit by life, and his eyes showed further trauma.

Angelica Black, the elegant, regal, yet surprisingly muggle-oriented Muggle Studies professor, nudged the tall, dark, mysterious man sitting next to her while looking at Chessie.

"Regulus," she said calmly in her American accent, "This is who I was telling you about. This is Chessie Wharton."

The man turned his attention from the book hidden in his lap towards the foci of his wife's attention.

"Hello," Chessie said uncertainly. She wasn't given to feeling cowed by impressions generally, but when the tall, pale, grey-eyed yet dark-haired Black descendant focused on her, it felt as though he could see right through her. That was not possible, she had to firmly remind herself. Yet, she was just as sure that he knew what she had been doing through the war even more than she did about him, it was a lot more than she was comfortable with. They had met, very briefly, the prior winter during the rescue of Australis, but Chessie's wrangling of students and a dangerous situation had belayed her creating an impression of him.

"Hello," he responded neutrally, buttering a roll. Angelica took over, being willing to talk for both of them.

"Reg," she said warmly," has been accepted as the new History of Magic professor for the year until we figure out where Binns got off to. Reg, this is Chessie. She teaches Defense Against the Dark Arts."

"I have heard about that," Regulus said quietly, nodding in greeting. "The word on the street is that even though you are a werewolf, you are a strict, firm, but ultimately fair professor. It is hard to fire someone held in those regards."

"Not that some haven't tried," Chessie warned, "But I am always ready."

Angelica rolled her pretty brown eyes dramatically. "Is this how Slytherins talk to each other? No wonder your House isn't called the sociable house. This is positively tedious."

A brief smirk crossed Regulus Black's pale, angular features.

"Wampus is not translatable to Hogwarts Houses, my beloved," he said in a very quiet tenor, "but if I had to compartmentalize, your attitude is positively Gryffindor."

Chessie snorted. "Go dye your robes red and gold and think about your life," she goaded as they all ate. Angelica smiled at her husband and friend as they all dug into the feast.


	22. Dark Arts, and the Defense Against Them

"My intention, as your Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, is not to ensure your safety," Chessie began briskly on the first Thursday of the semester to the first year Slytherin/Hufflepuff class, slowly descending down the stairs from her office to the main level of the classroom in what was becoming her traditional first-day-of-school uniform of an open black robe over a leather vest with a billowy long-sleeved undershirt, and leather pants tucked into knee-high leather stiletto boots, all in black. Her hair today was wild and loose, semi-tight curls forming her hair into almost an afro of dark brown framing her face and jawline.

"My job description is stated as, and I quote," Chessie drew out a small piece of paper from her pocket, "to inform students upon current, past, and potential threats stemming from the Dark Arts against the wizarding world, and how to react to and counter them."

She paused in front of her young students, all of whom were staring in rapt amazement.

"One of the biggest threats you will ever face, Dark Arts or not, is lack of knowledge. I, therefore, will be presenting a multitude of ideas and practical experiences for you to individually learn how to counter the unknown. Today, for example, I am going to teach you how to re-contain a hive of pixies," she grinned, patting a large cage covered by a heavy blanket that was positively vibrating in place. She taught and demonstrated the counter-curse, and then pulled the blanket off the cage. Immediately, the buzzing sound increased sixfold as about a dozen electric blue pixies discovered the world and potential victims about them.

"Remember what we just rehearsed," Chessie said cheerfully, "and good luck!"

She opened the cage door and the pixies swarmed the students.

The first Friday of the semester, Chessie was skillfully blocked from passing down the hallway by the new Gryffindor Head of House and Transfiguration teacher, Sheridan Baltair. He stood gracefully in black teacher's robes, brown wavy hair casually swept back and blue eyes suspiciously alert, as Chessie gave up on maneuvering past him.

"What," she said bluntly, standing and regarding the tall, lean professor in front of her. Baltair leaned in a bit.

"What," he said coldly, "Is the same question I have as to why a werewolf is teaching school. Is it even legal for you to be working here?"

"That is a question for the Headmistress, Professor," Chessie said with icy calm. The man had rubbed her wrong for two weeks straight now, ever since the first staff meeting in which he refused to acknowledge her. "And although it is none of your concern whatsoever, yes, I was granted an exemption due to my experience in the subject matter."

"In Dark Arts?" he asked facetiously, brushing his hair charismatically.

"In Defense against them," Chessie elaborated, golden eyes narrowing. "I would suggest that any complaint be lodged with Minerva, and that the professors, regardless of personal viewpoint, present a professional unity in front of students. Else you may end up replaced next year."

"Not if you leave first," Baltair said far too casually, straightening his robes and striding off. Chessie scowled, then kept walking.

Five witches sat around a heavy wooden table at the Hog's Head Inn, already varying levels of drunk. The sun had just gone down an hour before, but it had been the first week of classes. They were all in what passed for casual clothes- in Pomona Sprout, Septima Vector, and Aurora Sinistra's cases, a casual version of wizarding robes. Angelica Black was clad in in a pink peacoat that irreparably made her look like the America's former first lady Jackie Onassis in Chessie's mind. All she needed was to lose her natural tan and add a pillbox hat. Chessie wore a black leather bomber jacket with leather pants and her dominatrix heels, frizzy dark brown hair mostly pulled back into a crazy bun.

They all were somewhat slouched in the bar. Sinistra was already slouched forward with her head laid in her arms. Sprout spoke first.

"So, this year's new crop," she slurred over her fifth pint, "dish, girls."

Angelica giggled, and spoke up in her American accent, "Whatever happens this year, my son Ara is an angel."

"Just Ara?" Septima asked, staring into her mug pensively. Beside her, Angelica snorted.

"Yes, just Ara. Corvus is a mess," she admitted.

Chessie tried to sit up erect as best she could, despite how the room was spinning around her. She hadn't gone out all summer while Ambrose had been in the hospital, and she had discovered too late how much her tolerance had dropped. They had planned for George to come drag her back to her quarters at Hogwarts at eleven, and although there was still over an hour until then, she was grateful to have someone else looking out for her. She suspected that she would probably fall over as soon as she tried to stand up.

"Corvus is a mess," Chessie agreed haughtily, "trying to distract my boys. They are angles- angels at home in summer."

The other four women laughed or snorted into their drinks. Chessie scowled.

"Angels. Not at school, they are terrible at school. Especially when Miss Black is around,"

Chessie glared at Angelica, who shrugged and said that she liked the girl.

Ambrose expecially seems to get distracted by her," Angelica goaded. Chessie pretended to frown even more.

"Another round!" she shouted instead. Aberforth, behind the bar, complied.

"Alright, so," Sprout said, waving her arms sluggishly at the women, "Quidditch. Predictions?"

"Absolom told me he got on as Slytherin keeper this year," Chessie said, "Otherwise I don't care. I'm out."

The twins were different in that regard as well. Competitive skills such as sports were difficult for Ambrose, as a werewolf, compared to his normal wizard brother, since he was so influenced by the lunar cycle. Absolom had spoken of his Quidditch tryouts, and how he had been shooed in as keeper before tryouts were even over. The prior year, Ambrose had discovered a hidden talent as the Quidditch Commentator, and was due to renew the role this year, on top of starting his fourth year as a repeat member of the Frog Choir. Absolom was starting his second year on the Hogwarts Quidditch team, having been a chaser the previous year.

They discussed a few other players for various Houses, laid their wagers, and moved on.

"Okay, so the new Gryffindor Head of House," Sinistra prompted, her voice muffled by her sleeves. She still hadn't moved from her slouch. "None of us know who this man is other than that Minerva hired him to teach Transfiguration and be Head of House. No one has been Head of House for Gryffindor other than Minerva since at least the 1970s. Maybe earlier."

"He has already made it plenty clear that werewolves are personally offensive," Chessie scowled at her seventh stein.

Sprout thoughtfully studied her own ale. "I've been around longer than all of you. I've seen the entire staff change, save Filius, Minerva, and myself. But this Binns thing has me a little spooked, and I'm not getting the best vibe from this new Baltair fella. It may be nothing," she said, looking around the table at each of them in turn, "and it may not. In my experience, either way, our loyalty is ultimately to the students. As long as there are students at Hogwarts, our jobs are to teach them. No matter who our co-professors are. No matter what they do, or say. I'd recommend remembering that."

"Oh hey!" Chessie slurred cheerfully, unable to focus her golden eyes on George. "Ladies! Look! It's that guy I'm marrying!"

There were catcalls. George smirked, trying not to laugh.

"Ladies," he finally managed to say between suppressed laughter. "Have you had a good evening?"

"Yes! I have friends, look!" Chessie smiled drunkenly, gesturing wildly around. "They tolerate me! I've fooled them all!"

Cheers went up and an uncoordinated toast to Chessie occurred.

"Are you ready to go home now?" George asked, amused. There were boos around the table.

"Ugh yes," Chessie said, "I'm tired of women. Women are the worst."

She dramatically shoved her nearly empty pint glass away, and attempted to stand up. Once she hit her feet, Chessie realized how much she had drank and immediately fell into George, who caught her with a laugh. "Is the world swimming?" he asked, teasing.

"So much fish," Chessie slurred. George laughed and half-led, half-dragged her towards the door.

"Bye, girls!" Chessie yelled cheerfully, "See you at school!"

They cheered and even Chessie let out a whoop as George, laughing so hard he could barely support her, led her down the street to the public use fireplaces on the Floo Network and ultimately home, where Chessie laid down on a sofa and refused to move and George ultimately fell asleep in bed alone, thoroughly amused at his fiance.


	23. Romulus the Second

Two days later, Chessie decided to abuse her position as fake Head of House by listening in on conversations as she pretended to read Defensive Magical Theory as a refresher in the Slytherin Common Room. Slughorn had once again left her with a House task, and so after Chessie had notified the prefects to do it for her, she had lingered in the Common Room at one of the corner desks that she had frequented ten years ago as a student, pretending to take notes for a lesson.

Behind her back, she heard conversations.

"They voted it down?" a surly, deep, female voice asked. Chessie's brain went to work and identified this as Avis Carrow, the pale, thinly-red-haired daughter of the Carrow siblings, who had dominated Hogwarts not many years prior.

A voice that held a light American accent blended with the formal British that Chessie knew belonged to Corvus Black spoke up, "They seemed so amenable at the time. They shook our hands in the hospital this summer."

"People can seem amenable about a lot of things and not meant it," Australis said bitterly, pulling her knees up under her chin and pouting thoughtfully.

"All this after the letters that Ambrose has written," Absolom said bitterly as he folded up a copy of the Daily Prophet in disgust and tossed it onto the ebony wood coffee table between the two sofas that held the Cenopathy twins, Corvus, and Avis.

"That's dumb," Avis said, scrambling for words. She wasn't the brightest but the twins and Corvus still accepted her assistance. They welcomed anyone struggling with themselves. In return for not avoiding her like the rest of the school, she had turned into a devoted advocate.

"I'm beginning to think sending letters isn't enough," Ambrose said thoughtfully. "Something more is needed."

"Who should I punch?" Avis asked happily. She knew her strengths. Ambrose grinned.

"Thanks, Avis, but I think maybe it isn't just Letters to the Editor that I should be writing. Maybe I should write letters to the Wizengamot jury members themselves. Or entire articles for the papers. A lot of people still think the Prophet is government-run."

"It's worth a try," Corvus said thoughtfully, leaning back into the couch. "You know, you should ask my dad for help with writing. He's amazing with writing. Don't tell him I said that. Ara inherited that word magic too, I could get him to help."

"I'm going to tell him," Australis said, smiling wickedly. Corvus threw a decorative emerald green pillow at her.

"Don't you dare!"

Chessie smirked. Regulus had been compiling research and writing a history of the First and Second Wizarding Wars. She had visited his office on an errand from Angelica recently and had seen piles of notes, books, diagrams, and more piled on every available surface, as well as several corkboards with photos, notes, and miscella tacked up. The first volume was due to be released soon, he had been working on it for about five years now. A rough copy of the first had already been distributed to staff volunteers for beta reading, and despite having to do her job and handle life stuff, Chessie was enthralled. He may not say much and be a little awkward in person, but this wizard used words like most use spells. She began to see the appeal to a witch like Angelica- erudite, skilled at research and writing, charming when there is a demand.

As for Ara Black, Regulus and Angelica's second son, Chessie as well as several other professors had already received lengthy, overly-long essays in classes. Her most recent assignment for first years- a look into the functionality and practicality of gargoyles, please describe with historical examples in a nine-inch essay- had netted a whopping 20-inch essay. Despite herself, she had read the entire thing. It turns out wordcraft was something that could be inherited.

"Perhaps," Ambrose said, and Chessie returned to reality, "But I don't want to blow the secret identity. I think most people somehow still think Romulus is Lupin, not me."

"Didn't he die?" Avis asked bluntly.

"Yes," Corvus said bitterly, "In the Great Hall, four years ago."

"Don't make it hurt, I knew him," Ambrose said glumly. "One of the first people I trusted who didn't hurt me. Sorry, Avis, I know you didn't know."

"I didn't," she rasped in a sulk.

"Me neither," Australis patted her hand consolingly.

"Sorry, Avis," Absolom and Corvus repeated. It didn't do to ostracize their strongest ally, physically.

Chessie frowned, and quietly stood up to leave. She gathered her book and notes and left without undue notice.

She hadn't been aware that Ambrose was the mysterious 'Romulus' in the Daily Prophet. She hadn't had the leisure to investigate but now that she knew who he was, perhaps some information should find its way to him. Anonymously, of course. Chessie had no intention of losing her position despite her public attitude towards it, but at the same time she knew that the Umbridge Laws were still in effect. Shacklebolt and the new Ministry were slowly working their way through the lists, but there was still a lot of infighting and beauracracy slowing things down.

She decided to go talk to Regulus.

"Angelica," Chessie said casually as she entered the stylish, tidy office of her colleague. "I need some advice."

The tanned, dark-haired woman looked up from a pile of essays. She was wearing a simple knit sweater and denim pants, yet Chessie in her fancy leather corset, collared shirt, and tight pants felt like garbage next to her.

"Sure, hon," Angelica said in her American accent, "what's up?"

"I just discovered a secret, and it needs to stay so," Chessie warned, sitting down in one of the chairs across from her friend.

"Okay?"

"Ambrose is Romulus," Chessie said seriously. Angelica blinked and frowned.

"I thought Remus was Romulus,"

"No, Remus died. Ambrose is Romulus now. Apparently Remus was okay with it."

"Huh." Angelica rubbed her temples. "So how does this constitute a favor?"

"I need your husband to anonymously help him somehow," Chessie said. Angelica blinked and looked at her friend.

"What? How does that help?"

"Angelica, I've been beta-reading the book Regulus is about to publish. He is incredible with words, and I think part of Ambrose's problem is that he has no practice in writing for media publication, for audiences who are different than him, really for writing in general. You've seen his essays. He's better in person."

"True," Angelica said slowly, considering. "We could certainly ask," she trailed off.

"Asking isn't quite as much effort as I had in mind, but I suppose I wouldn't be able to bully someone who had the strength to defy Voldemort, so I'd rather take another tactic."

"How do I play in to this super Slytherin plan?"

"Talk to him. Persuade him to help Ambrose in a way that absolves us all as professors, since we aren't allowed to take political stances alongside students, but also helps him petition the Ministry for werewolf rights. Regulus is incredible at research and details. That kind of person is good to have nearby."

"I mean, I just- Chessie, why is this so important?" Angelica gently asked, leaning forward on her desk casually. Chessie flashed back to her encounter with Sheridan Baltair, the Transfiguration teacher and pro tem Head of Gryffindor. Chessie leaned forward onto the desk and met Angelica's gaze.

"What did you have to do to get hired here?" Chessie asked.

"I was told to apply for the position, give three letters of reference, pass a background check, and I interviewed with McGonagall. Why?"

"My hiring was subject to a full Governor's Board investigation and multi-level background check. On top of that, I had to have no less than seven letters of personal recommendation from references, attended three meetings of the Governor's Board and one of the Wizengamot, just so I could be granted an exemption to the law prohibiting werewolves from getting academic or government-related jobs. And then I was officially offered the position and did those steps you did also. Last year, all it took was Slughorn writing a bunch of fake letters to cause me to have to go defend my job for the Governors. I use the Howlers I receive from offended parents on a daily basis as kindling for my fireplace, and I haven't had to purchase more than one bundle of wood per semester in the three semesters that I have been here."

She looked down at her left hand, at her engagement ring.

"Nothing in the time since I have been bitten has been easy. It is hard enough as an adult, but to a child? To someone who can't even fully remember a life without an immense amount of struggle for a basic right? Angelica, Ambrose and Absolom had a sister once. She was bitten when Ambrose was, and when she was taken from the werewolf camp, she looked around and saw that in a way, nothing had changed. She chose to kill herself rather than suffer through that life presented to her.

"Every time I have to go to the Ministry offices, that stupid little man at the security desk has to pull out a special 'Dangerous Beasts Registry' clipboard that I have to sign. It holds up the line and I get called things by the wizards who are still stuck in line. He refuses to meet my eyes."

Chessie stopped suddenly, before she started yelling. Angelica was still watching, eyes suspiciously wet.

"I see," she said softly, gently taking Chessie's hand.

"I'll talk to him."

"If you dare pity me, I will end you." Chessie said firmly, taking a moment before removing her hand to remember how contact felt with someone other than George.


End file.
